When Doing Nothing is the Best Thing To Do
When things go wrong and no one knows what to do, it’s easy to think that you need to do something — but that’s not always the best idea.
I just finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan — the perfect book to read during the time of the coronavirus. The Covid-19 pandemic is a classic Black Swan event for most of us.
One of the important points of the book is that Black Swan events aren’t the same for everyone. According to Taleb, a Black Swan event is:
- “an outlier:” unexpected and unprepared for;
- an event with “extreme impact” and unforeseen effects;
- later fit into a narrative “making it explainable and predictable.”
It looks like the Covid-19 pandemic meets all three of these characteristics, for most (but not all) people.
You could see this coming if you knew where to look
Clearly there are many smart, knowledgeable people who saw this kind of pandemic coming, and sounded the alarm. The Covid-19 pandemic is no Black Swan for them. It’s validation of their warnings.
But their audience effectively ignored these serious alarms, and worse, avoided taking any actions that could have mitigated or even prevented the most dire effect of this pandemic.
In fact, most people acted as if a pandemic of this magnitude could never occur, even though others (who actually know what they’re talking about) said that it definitely would occur — they just didn’t know when.
And by “people” I don’t mean just regular people, who really can’t do much to prevent a global pandemic. I mean also, and more importantly, the kind of people who are in a position to make decisions to deal with this kind of problem.
Like political and business leaders, who:
- Should take these kind of Black Swan scenarios very seriously, because that’s literally part of their job description; and
- Had many opportunities to make decisions to defend against the most devastating effects of exactly such an event.
Now is of course not the time to point fingers. There will be plenty of time to do that after this crisis is past us, as part three of the Black Swan event falls into place: we’ll create a narrative about it.
“Of course it was inevitable; all these factors led to it; I knew it was a pandemic before anyone else,” so on and so forth. Everything becomes so much clearer in the rear view mirror, as history is revised and spun for the benefit of those who were responsible.
Yes, “mistakes were made”, even though “it’s nobody’s fault.” We’ll have to sort all of that out later, when people aren’t dying. Right now, we need to take care of each other, and we’re not getting a lot of help from the people who can make the biggest difference.
This is the hand we’ve been dealt
Now that we find ourselves all scrambling to address the errors of the elites, who clearly dropped the ball, we all have to make good decisions and take our own actions to mitigate our risks, to reduce our chances of a truly bad outcome, for us and the people we care about.
These risks are:
- personal — getting sick and, in the worst case, dying;
- social — getting other people sick, even if we don’t have symptoms, and therefore spreading the disease and making the crisis worse; and,
- societal — not doing everything we can together to slow the spread of the disease, so overworked health care professionals and first responders have the capacity to take care of the people who do get sick, or also need medical care for other reasons besides Covid-19.
How do you decide what to do, or not to do? One of the most useful principles of the Black Swan is negative advice, or knowing when it’s better to do nothing than it is to do something.
People do not realize that success consists mainly in avoiding losses, not trying to derive profits.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
This clearly makes sense for investors, but what about normal folks who now might not even have have a job any more?
The principle is the same. This is exactly why it’s so important to observe social distancing. Right now, it’s much riskier to go out and do something than it is to stay home.
Now is the time to do nothing
Another important principle of The Black Swan is that it’s not the likelihood of a risk, or the frequency of the risk, but the severity of the consequences that are most important.
We in real life do not care about simple, raw probability (whether an event happens or does not happen); we worry about the consequences (the size of the event, how much total destruction of lives or wealth, or other losses, will come from it)
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
If you go to work, or travel, or go to a party, or the beach, right now when you don’t absolutely have to, you’re taking on a huge risk for a small payoff. It might be fun to travel or meet friends, but it’s also extremely dangerous to you and everyone you know.
Remember, you can’t make any money, or help the economy to recover, if you’re dead. Anyone who suggests that people should be willing to “sacrifice themselves” to save the economy are both cold blooded sociopaths, and also extremely poor at managing risk.
If your job is necessary — you work in a hospital, or you drive an ambulance, first of all: thank you. Please do everything you can to take care of yourself. We all need you and your skills to take care of the rest of us, now more than ever.
But, if you don’t have an essential job, don’t go to work. Spend your time asking your landlord to forgive the rent for a month or two, instead of trying to go to work to earn a few bucks.
Reach out to friends and family to help, and help them (at a safe distance, of course) as well as you can. But don’t risk your health, or worse, for a boss that doesn’t care about your well-being.
This is the value of doing nothing instead of something: stay healthy, help slow the spread of the virus, and then you can sort things out after the danger has passed.
But what if I don’t feel so great right now?
What if you’re feeling sick — should you go to the hospital? Here’s another situation where not taking action may be the wisest course.
As long as you don’t exhibit any dangerous symptoms (difficulty breathing, chest pains or pressure, for example), stay away from the hospital. The hospital is a crowded and dangerous place right now. If you think you have Covid-19, try to get tested at a drive-through testing station. But call your doctor first.
In fact, if you aren’t feeling well for any reason, call your doctor. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV, so don’t take your medical advice from me.
But don’t also assume that the best thing to do is to go and visit your doctor’s office, or to head straight to the ER, just because you have a fever. That could put you in even greater danger.
On the other hand, if your symptoms are serious (whether or not they are related to Covid-19), do everything you can to get the care you need.
[A little aside here: this of course assumes that you have health insurance and a doctor you can call. The fact that millions of people in the US don’t have these basics in place is a real problem, and the Covid-19 pandemic is perhaps the clearest illustration of why it’s important to ensure that everyone gets the medical care they need — but that’s a topic for another article.]
Think severity, not likelihood
This isn’t a good time to be a hypochondriac, and it’s also not the time to ignore symptoms that could be serious. It can be a hard call to make, but think in terms of the severity of the consequences, not the likelihood of being sick in the first place.
If you are sick, but don’t need immediate medical attention, stay home and call your doctor. Don’t risk going to the hospital or your doctor’s office, where you could catch Covid-19 if you don’t already have it.
In this case, it’s likely you are sick, but the severity of exposing yourself to Covid-19 is much greater than the severity of staying home with a cold or the flu.
But as soon as things look serious, get treatment right away. What is serious? Anything that could be fatal, if untreated, or anything that could cause permanent damage.
First, do no harm
If you’re not sick, but you might have been exposed, or you aren’t sure, doing nothing is the best idea — at least until your doctor tells you where you can get tested without having to go into the hospital.
If you think there’s a chance you have Covid-19, don’t mix and mingle with other people, for any reason. Isolate yourself immediately. You’ll know in 14 days if you’re OK.
This is the value of doing nothing, and it’s hard. In a time of crisis, when you don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen, it’s comforting to take action.
But it’s extremely dangerous to take the wrong action. There is no such thing as being too careful right now, because the risks of catching Covid-19 are so high, even if you don’t get sick or die yourself.
The problem is:
the preference we have is to do something rather than nothing, even in cases when doing something is harmful.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
This advice has never been more valuable than right now, but it’s always good advice.
It’s especially worth considering when your boss or your president are insisting you should go back to work even though the risks to your health are extreme.
Focus on the severity of the risk, not the likelihood. And please take care of yourself, and your friends and neighbors. We all need to help each other out to get through this, even if it means staying apart for a little while.
Also, please remember that I’m not a doctor or a medical specialist. If you think you might have Covid-19, read the CDC’s guide, What To Do if You Are Sick, and call your doctor right away.
