Disaster Preparation: Diseases 2

Second order effects

After last week’s post, I did not expect to end up writing about the novel coronavirus this soon, but I have thought a lot and learned a lot in the last few days so here it is. I promise this isn’t going to be some drawn-out paranoid series though, this should be the last one for a while.

What are you sinking about?

Well, my qualifications to comment on infectious diseases have not changed, nor has the data I have access to.

But I have noticed that to all extents and purposes China seems to be destroying their own economy in the pursuit of dealing with Covid-19. Multiple cities locked down, factories shuttered, travel bans.

I read an article that said small and medium-sized businesses in China are planning to fire 30% of their workers due to the extended shutdowns.

Now, I have serious doubts that the Chinese government would do this if it didn’t have a good reason. And that implies that the Japanese government may soon be making similar decisions.

Show me the money

Let’s do some disaster scenario modelling. Let’s assume that we end up in a similar situation to the one China is in here in Japan. Regardless of how serious the disease is, etc. is there anything we could do to prepare?

Well, as you may know, my wife runs a small English school so we started thinking about possible scenarios there, mainly, what do we do if we are forced to close the school for several months?

I actually asked on Reddit, and got some interesting responses. The initial replies were very negative, but by the end I learned a few interesting things.

Basically, it seems we legally have a couple of options:

Of course we do have some money set aside for emergencies so could cover salaries in the short-term at least, and there is also the option of trying to deliver classes online, at least for a month or two.

I think there isn’t much chance of us needing to use the apocalypse option.

But we have thought about this, and have a good idea of what we might end up doing.

What will you do?

If you are an employee, it is somewhat likely your employer is also thinking about this. If you work part-time or are an independent contractor or business owner, you should be thinking about this too.

What is a likely worst-case scenario for you? And are you likely to survive it economically?

If you’re an employee, could you live on 60% of your salary for a few months?

If you are part-time, a contractor, or a business owner, could you get by with no income for a few months?

If not, it might be worth making an effort to save a little extra for the next few weeks/months or reduce your fixed expenses in order to lessen the pain a bit. Maybe put off any unnecessary purchases. Put some money into the emergency fund instead of the stock market. Basic resilience, anti-fragility stuff.

I also suspect there is a non-zero chance that classes at my university will not start on time in April (similar to how it was closed for a couple of months after 3-11).

How about you? Are you thinking about possible shutdown scenarios? Anything we have missed?

15 Responses

  1. I actually received a brief (focused on Hong Kong) from a lawyer friend about this although I would not be the person responsible for this decision where I work. The principle in play is that an employer has the responsibility to take “reasonable care” to provide a safe workplace for employees (and for that matter for customers). If their being at work would endanger their health the employer has failed in that duty. Depending on the country the employer might still have financial responsibilities to the employee even if they tell them to stay home. Related questions are whether an employer can take employee temperatures as they arrive (e.g. to refuse admittance to employees who appear to be sick). For a school you would potentially need to think about whether you had a responsibility to screen students as they arrive so that someone who is sick doesn’t infect others although Japan isn’t hyper-litiginous and I don’t know the specific laws here.

    In my work I’ve seen several impacts. For my last few flights to the US the ANA cabin crew and most staff at Narita and Haneda are wearing masks. Meetings I was scheduled to speak at in Singapore and Shanghai were cancelled (no regrets there). We cancelled all travel from and within China. At the very end of January I had invited a subject expert (on Chinese regulations) from China to speak at a meeting in Washington DC including the US FDA and if we’d held the meeting a week later she wouldn’t have been able to return. Fortunately no one was or became sick but that illustrates how quickly things have changed even among public health experts.

    Certainly agree with the advice to check personal financial health in case things took a surprizing turn for the worse financially but I see that as what we should always cover with an emergency fund.

  2. I’d be interested to hear a bit more about online video lessons for those who have already done them with elementary school children. I can’t imagine them going very well, except maybe the first one which would be a novelty. Would every child be able to see every other child, or just the teacher? Some (many?) would probably do it on a smartphone so screen space would be limited. And I wonder what kind of activities would work best?

    Also, from past experience, a lot of parents seem to be a bit clueless about technical things so getting the software set up on their devices in the first place would be a challenge. Quite a few have Line though, and this allows up to four video callers at once (more without the video), so probably our best option would be to separate larger classes into two groups and do each group for half the time. Our income would drop by 50% but that’s better than no income at all. And better for parents who may be worried about their income too.

    Hopefully none of this will happen but you know what they say… hope for the best and plan for the worst.

    Thanks for these posts Ben. Much appreciated.

    1. We have classes of up to 8, or 12+, so apparently a paid Zoom account might be a good solution for us.

      Another good thing about the system is that students can log in online from a link, they don’t need an account, an app, or software. Should be fairly ‘parent proof’ 😉

      Going to check it out this week. Starting to get a bit more worried.

      We are thinking of hiring a new teacher, but it might be too risky under the present circumstances…

  4. Thanks for the reply Ben. I’ve just tried Zoom with the free account. It seems that you can invite up to 80 people to a meeting with that, including video, but it limits the meeting to 40 minutes. I signed up, started a meeting, then sent the “join meeting” link to my wife’s smartphone via Line. Then the problems started:

    1. The page that opened when she clicked on the link was all in English. So I tried it again with the language in the Zoom software (on the PC) set to Japanese. But it still opened in English on her phone. This is probably because the language of her phone is set to English. But if the parents got it in English they’d probably freak out!

    2. Next she had to download Zoom before continuing. The “Download from Zoom” button did nothing (not sure why), so she had to choose the “Download from Google Play” button. This asked her to complete her details, like entering payment information, because we don’t use it much. This would also cause some parents to freak out. Actually it turned out she could skip that step but it wasn’t easy to see at first.

    3. Eventually it downloaded the Zoom app (had to wait, press Install, etc.), then she had to go back to the original Zoom message and click on the “Join meeting” button.. Then she had to enter her name (not too painful).

    4. It took her a while to get the video and audio working (had to allow access to “record video”, etc. which sounded a bit scary at first), but eventually we were connected. After that all was fine: good quality video and audio.

    I’m concerned that all the steps you have to take to get connected for the first time will be too much for some parents. It’s not as simple as just clicking on a link! If they already have Line then I think Line group video will be much simpler.

    If you have any better experience with it please let me know. Perhaps the paid option is more user-friendly somehow? But it seems inevitable that they’ll have to download the software before using it.

    1. Yeah, just tried that again and you are right, it is a bit more involved than I remember!

      The good news is that once you have the app, you can log in with just the link. We have over 350 students, so LINE is just not going to cut it for us. We may ask all our parents to download the app in advance and do a quick trial run with them to make sure they are comfortable with it.

      We’re planning a letter about the current situation and what our thinking is: asking students who are sick not to come to class, if school is shut down don’t come to class, etc.

      I’m hoping it either blows over soon without incident or spreads enough that people just tune it out. Crappy timing for us, we were just about to hire an extra teacher 🙁

      1. Thanks again. Yeah, we’ve been playing around with Zoom again today and it seems like the best choice. There are some nice features, such as sharing the whiteboard, video and audio. I think we’ll go with that. The first-time installation is a bit brutal for the technically challenged (my wife’s parents couldn’t do it without her being there helping them), but hopefully the majority can scrape through it.

        We’ve also written a letter to give to the parents from tomorrow. The only thing we’re stuck on is how much to charge them for the video lessons. It doesn’t seem right to charge the same amount as a normal lesson because the quality won’t be as good and some of the time will be wasted on technical issues. Also it doesn’t seem right that students who aren’t able to join are charged the same amount. But we don’t want to charge those students nothing either – the ones who can’t be bothered might take advantage of that. So we’re thinking of about two thirds the normal lesson fee for everyone, whether they can make it or not. Is that too much? I’d prefer half, but that would stretch us if it went on for weeks. This is a sensitive time though. Some students are currently thinking about whether to continue or not from April, and any perceived unfairness might push them the wrong way!

        As always, I’d appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks.

        1. It’s a tough one. We will probably send our coronavirus letter out next week, but it will just be things like: we’ll follow government advice, if your kids are sick don’t come in, if your school is closed don’t come in, etc.

          Don’t think we’ll mention the video lessons. They are a last resort, and I don’t feel I’m in a position to define when they will happen, or for how long. There are too many unknowns.

          As for pricing I was thinking 50-75% of our regular fees, with no makeups possible. We’ll use the free version to start with, and see if we need to upgrade to paid (about 20,000 yen a year per person -we have up to 3 simultaneous classes, so 60,000 yen a year).

          We need to practice on the system, and then get our teachers up to speed. If it looks like it might be necessary, we’ll ask parents to install the software and do some trial runs.

          Would really rather not be using energy on this at this point.

          1. Yeah, that’s a good idea keeping it a bit vague, especially the pricing, until we know what we’re up against. Maybe we’ll just say that video lessons will be cheaper than classroom ones and the price will be announced later. But we’ll definitely mention the video idea – as you say, as a last resort – and we’ll definitely give the letters this week. Even that might be too late. I’ve heard on the grapevine that the Board of Education are planning to make an announcement within the next few days. The virus is speading fast up here in Hokkaido and school children are already infected. Schools in Hong Kong have been closed since the end of January and won’t open until mid-March at the earliest. Sounds drastic, but it seems to be working there. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Japan decides to do something similar. The main problem is the HS test on March 3rd I think. They might try to wait until after that if they can.

            Anyway, it’s been good thinking about and discussing this. Yeah, work we could do without at this time of year, I agree. But I feel a bit better about it now, hope you do too.

            Best wishes,
            Ian

          2. It’s official. The Hokkaido Board of Education has asked all elementary and junior high schools to close from tomorrow (Friday 27th). Damn, we couldn’t even get our letter out!

            We’ll revise the letter and send it electronically to all those who haven’t got it yet, then try to start Zoom video lessons from tomorrow. Still thinking about the price.

            Interesting times ahead, eh? Good luck everyone.

          3. Damn, I was hoping we’d have a bit more time. I guess I will have to try to figure out how to use Zoom in the next couple of days or so 🙁

  5. Ian – I think of they were closing the public schools in my area, I would feel a moral duty to close my Eikaiwa too, but I doubt the Board of Education has the authority to demand it. I wonder then if the regular jukus etc up there are are being told to close, and if not, are any doing so through choice? I presume the board of education is advising students to stay home, but would be interesting to know if they follow the advice or not.

    1. We’re planning to close if local schools do. We teach 99% kids.

      Currently planning to take a week off to prepare, then do Zoom lessons. We’ll charge 75% from the second month, but not allow makeups.

      My current thinking is a shutdown won’t last longer than a month. The government seems to have given up on containment and they are just hoping to slow it down so that hospitals aren’t swamped.

    2. We finished our first video lesson earlier and it went better than we were expecting. 80% participation rate too. Surprisingly there weren’t any initial connection problems, though one girl on a smartphone lost her connection towards the end. The video quality was good, audio could have been better for some (I guess it depends on their mic and how loud they speak). This was a difficult 2nd grade elementary group even in the classroom and I was a bit nervous going into it! But now have more confidence for the coming lessons.

      Yes, the local Board of Education can’t force businesses like ours to close, but I think they expect it. The students are told to stay home and not go to other learning places. None of the JHS students I asked last night were going to juku they said.

      By the way, some local schools said they’d be closed for a week, some for two weeks. One week seems a bit useless so I think we’ll continue video lessons for at least two weeks. We’re charging full at the moment but we’ve told the parents we’ll give them a refund later, the size of which depends on how the lessons go.

    3. Sorry, I wrote that before I heard the news. Looks like we’ll all be closing for at least a month now 🙁