409. The Side Effects of Social Distancing

[0] After a relatively slow and scattered response to the global pandemic known as COVID -19, the U .S. has in the past week assumed what is essentially a wartime footing.

[1] The primary focus is on curtailing the spread of the virus and creating capacity to treat those who contract it.

[2] To accomplish this, we've been encouraged, all 330 million of us, to keep to ourselves as much as possible, a practice known as social distancing.

[3] schools and universities have been shut down, along with cultural and religious institutions, restaurants, and much more.

[4] The same for sporting events, theaters, conventions, and any other large public gatherings.

[5] Many office buildings have emptied out with employees ordered to work remotely.

[6] Travel, especially on planes and trains, is being severely diminished.

[7] All this has resulted in the biggest disruption of daily life that many of us have ever known, and it will last for weeks, perhaps months.

[8] Will it successfully contain the spread of COVID -19?

[9] We'll find out.

[10] Hopefully, it will at least be minimized.

[11] If we listen to the public health people, the virologists and the epidemiologists, and we should because they've been dreading and studying this kind of pandemic for years, they say the situation will get substantially worse in the U .S. before it gets better.

[12] And what other effects and after effects will this social distancing produce?

[13] There will be many consequences and certainly some unintended ones.

[14] Would anyone be surprised, for instance, to see a baby boom starting around nine months from now?

[15] Entire industries and segments of our society are being upended.

[16] The economic impact will be massive.

[17] Obviously, some people stand to be hurt badly.

[18] Others are more protected.

[19] And some may well benefit, including those who can entertain and deliver and sell to the millions of people who suddenly have few places to go, not much to do.

[20] But the overall economic impact will be hugely negative and will likely require a massive infusion of government aid, everything from industry bailouts to rent and tax relief to emergency aid for laid off workers.

[21] The stock markets fell 30 percent with one harrowing, single -day drop of 10 % and another of 12%.

[22] Volatility is higher than it's been since the financial crisis of 2008.

[23] Now, to be fair, before the COVID -19 pandemic began, apparently in Wuhan, China, the U .S. markets were at an all -time high, and part of the drop should be attributed to another huge market disruption that sort of slipped in under the radar, an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

[24] The fact is, there are a lot of things flying under the radar right now, a lot of consequences that may come out of the global response to COVID -19.

[25] So, we thought we'd call a few economists whose past research indicates they might have some insights into the future that's being crafted right now by the extraordinary changes we're all living through.

[26] They are...

[27] Nicholas Bloom, I'm a professor of economics at Stanford University.

[28] Bloom studies economic uncertainty and the management of firms.

[29] Also, I'm Toby Moskowitz.

[30] I'm a professor of finance and economics at Yale University.

[31] And I study financial markets and sports.

[32] And finally, my name is Marshall Burke.

[33] I am an economist at Stanford University.

[34] I'm an environmental economist, so I study how changes in the environment shape a range of human outcomes.

[35] health outcomes, economic outcomes, livelihoods more broadly.

[36] We'll talk about the sudden spike in working from home and online learning, about the super volatile stock markets, and, believe it or not, one silver lining in the black pandemic cloud.

[37] All that's coming up right after this.

[38] From Stitcher and Dubner Productions, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything.

[39] Here's your host, Stephen Dovner.

[40] Let's start with an overview of the economy itself in the age of COVID -19.

[41] Here's Nick Bloom.

[42] So there are two things that I think are happening now.

[43] First is there's clearly, you know, a tremendous negative shock on both demand and supply, you know, businesses are shutting down, transportation, tourism is falling.

[44] So that's what's called a first moment effect.

[45] We know for sure that's bad news.

[46] But there's a second factor thrown on top of that, which is there's incredible uncertainty, in particular left -tail risk.

[47] What does left -tail risk mean, please?

[48] Left -tail risk is very bad outcomes.

[49] So risk can, in theory, be on both the good side and the bad side.

[50] So there's upside risk and downside risk.

[51] The COVID -19 really only has, obviously, downside risk.

[52] It's hard to see anything good coming out of this.

[53] And this additional uncertainty historically has turned out to be really costly for the economy because businesses pause, hiring or investing.

[54] So I'd be pretty confident saying, I suspect we're now already in a recession, how bad it will be, it's hard to tell.

[55] You know, some of the latest work in academia is about network effects.

[56] And that's Toby Moskowitz.

[57] So, you know, take the NBA who just postponed the season, you know, the vendors, the suppliers, all the periphery industries, including people that, you know, work at the stadiums, taxis, hotels, they're all going to be affected by this.

[58] So we'll see that trickling effect happen as well.

[59] I wonder if you could talk for a minute about the difference between being right now.

[60] salaried full -time employee versus being an hourly or non -salaried worker and how, you know, it strikes me that that may be a huge split bifurcation that one class is going to do much better than the other.

[61] Am I wrong on that or right on that?

[62] You're right.

[63] So on the one hand, there's folks like, you know, me and you that are on a salary and then kind of relax in some senses and we have all kinds of, you know, issues with our kids and health risks, but at least we're not worried about losing our income.

[64] And then on the other high end, there are people that are hourly pay that I think life is substantially harder yet still for because they've also got to go out and work, which puts them to higher exposure risk.

[65] And when the recession happens, they're the ones that are easiest for the firms to lay off.

[66] Can you think of an example from history, either recent or distant, of how in a case like this, where workers, especially the most vulnerable workers, have the rug pulled out from under them, a case where government and or private firms responded well to this problem?

[67] I mean, unfortunately, when you look at recessions, generally, the lower -skilled, lower pay do much worse.

[68] When have there been a good response?

[69] You know, I'm scratching my head to think about it.

[70] I mean, there was things like Ford on the $5 a day, which was famous in the 30 stepped in to guarantee workers, you know, an honest living wage.

[71] In recent times, I mean, you know, the last 20, 30 years, actually, labor markets have generally been moving towards being more flexible, and so it's become easier for firms to, you know, lay people off, particularly hourly workers.

[72] In fact, we're already starting to see some layoffs from this.

[73] They would be, you see it, bakeries, restaurants, things of that nature, those are going to be the first to go.

[74] And that's something where policymakers and economists, I think, to think about to sort of smooth out this disruption.

[75] What do you do?

[76] Well, I think one of the answers, and it seems like this is a, you know, I'm sure there's some debate, but my reading of the news has been that it's been fairly bipartisan, is longer paid leave from work.

[77] That I think has to help.

[78] But that's, again, for full -time employees.

[79] I don't know what we do about, I mean, some sort of safety net for those people, I think would be important.

[80] When there's such a high level of economic uncertainty, especially one produced by, you know, this massive disruption or shock, what does that do to monetary or fiscal policy?

[81] Does it rob it of some of its typical power?

[82] Yes.

[83] As we speak on March 12th, the S &P 500 fell almost 10%, which is actually the second biggest drop since World War II.

[84] And more surprising was halfway through the day, the Fed and the European Central Bank both stepped in to try and provide stimulus to the market.

[85] And, you know, it's like blowing against the wind.

[86] So the market briefly went up and then just kept falling down.

[87] So unfortunately, monetary policy and to a broader extent fiscal policy, the government with tax and spending, I think has pretty limited effect on slowing us down.

[88] In this case, was it really the uncertainty or is it just the magnitude of, you know, the fear right now?

[89] You know, the primary reason why the Fed's move wasn't, you know, consequential is the damaging impact of COVID -19 is so large.

[90] There's not much the Fed can do.

[91] The other thing that's worth bearing in mind is, of course, before we went into this two weeks ago, interest rates were already very low.

[92] You know, we just fought a war against the Great Recession in 2008, 2009.

[93] We really hadn't reloaded our arsenal.

[94] and suddenly, you know, the biggest meaning in sight appears on the horizon.

[95] So economists had worried about this for a while.

[96] One of the reasons people wanted actually the Fed to put up interest rates a bit over the last two or three years so that we had some ammunition.

[97] The President, President Trump, has very vocally said that he wanted to keep rates as low as possible.

[98] Jay Powell, the chair of the Fed, reportedly had had inclinations in going the opposite direction over the past several years, but instead either kept them or kept lowering them.

[99] I mean, is this exactly the kind of instance where you wanted to keep that powder dry?

[100] You know, with benefit of hindsight, it was a mistake in particular to have massive tax cuts over the last two, three years, because we're actually growing very fast.

[101] What would have been much better is to push down the government debt so that right now, when we really need it, we could spend money.

[102] Normally, you want to have big blowouts and recessions to support the economy and, you know, earn your savings back in the booms.

[103] And instead, we're in the hangover from, you know, spending in a boom and suddenly we're hit with a recession.

[104] There's very little money left in the bank.

[105] So the fiscal position, I think, is, you know, is much more worrying because there we should have been generating a surplus and instead with a big deficit.

[106] This past Sunday, after we spoke, the Federal Reserve cut its rates to nearly zero.

[107] It also announced it would buy at least $700 billion in government bonds, a move known as quantitative easing, to try to keep markets from locking up.

[108] the stock markets were not mollified.

[109] They fell another 12 % on Monday.

[110] Let's face it, if we're not transacting with each other for some long period of time, that will take a toll.

[111] I mean, think about the airlines.

[112] If the airlines aren't making any money for a while and can't run their routes, that's going to affect lots of businesses, and all of that's going to go down for a while.

[113] Now, the thought is, of course, that as soon as everything jumps back up, the airlines can kickstart and start flying again.

[114] If that takes some time, it may take a little bit longer to recover, but I'm hopeful that won't be the case.

[115] The last time we saw a stock market meltdown like this was after the financial crisis began to really gather steam.

[116] And what we saw was a lot of investors, institutional, but a lot of individual investors, really panicked when the markets ended up falling.

[117] And many people sold low.

[118] And then as the recovery started, they ended up buying high.

[119] I think we all understand the emotional component of that, especially for people who are a little bit older and they just want to preserve the capital.

[120] As a finance person who's seen a few of these rises and falls now over the past few decades, do you have any general advice for people?

[121] Yes, I have very specific advice.

[122] Don't touch it.

[123] One of the basic findings from economics is you can't outthink the market.

[124] Anytime people try to time the market, they end up doing far more damage than they help themselves.

[125] It's very difficult to do.

[126] As one example, I had many colleagues.

[127] These are famous economists who said last week, I'm buying.

[128] I'm buying like crazy.

[129] This will be a blip.

[130] They're all sorry they did.

[131] And you're swimming with the sharks because the other side of that trade is guys in Wall Street that, you know, eat for lunch, retail investors like us, that don't really know what we're doing.

[132] So what I've always done, and I'm not the only financial economist that would tell you this, many of us would, is you have a long -term strategy, you stick to it.

[133] and you can't be blindsided or emotional about these short -term blips because you can't really do much about them.

[134] So the best advice is actually not to look.

[135] Investing is, of course, a case -specific pursuit.

[136] If you are an older investor, or if you've been putting money in a 529 plan for your kids' college tuition, and they're already deep into high school, then a 30 % drop in the market has different implications than if you've got a longer horizon.

[137] In any case, we should probably expect stockwork, market volatility to continue for the near term, especially because COVID -19 has created so much volatility in how the biggest companies in the world are doing business.

[138] Apple has closed most of its retail stores around the world.

[139] Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have enacted mandatory work -from -home policies for most employees.

[140] What will the effects of that be?

[141] And will COVID -19 provide researchers an opportunity to measure all these effects?

[142] Yes, much as you know, aircraft engineers investigate crash sites.

[143] Economists will investigate, you know, what happened after COVID -19.

[144] Nick Bloom probably knows more about working from home than just about anyone you'll ever meet.

[145] Not just because he's a professor and not because he's lazy, but because he has studied this very question.

[146] Somewhat coincidentally, six years ago, we ran a study out in Shanghai in China where a large online travel agent called Sea Trip, which is really like China's version of Expedia.

[147] They decided to allow employees to work from home because they found office space in Shanghai was expensive.

[148] They asked 1 ,000 employees who wanted to work from home.

[149] And interestingly, only 500 them volunteered, despite the fact that employees on average were commuting 30 minutes each way.

[150] Of those 500 employees, they then randomized them by birth date.

[151] They randomized them so that the experiment would be truly an experiment and not an exercise in self -selection.

[152] And then we tracked them for nine months.

[153] and what we found were three things.

[154] Firstly, employees working from home.

[155] So these were people, I should say, were booking telephone calls and making processing data on computers.

[156] So they were kind of individual working jobs.

[157] They were 13 % more productive.

[158] I mean, 13 % is a huge increase.

[159] And the reasons they told us was, you know, A, it's quarter at home so they could concentrate more, but B, actually, they just tended to work their full shift rather than spending as much time at lunch or arriving late or, you know, taking long toilet breaks.

[160] Secondly, their quit rates halved, many of them much preferred working from home and didn't want to leave their job.

[161] And thirdly, once you controlled the performance, since they were performing better, they actually weren't getting promoted any faster.

[162] So there is some stinging the tail that being at home seemed to reduce your ability to get promoted.

[163] It sounds like good news that productivity and happiness and all these things can increase.

[164] On the other hand, it sounds like that job that you were looking at lends itself particularly well to working from home, yes?

[165] Yes.

[166] As you say, there's a couple of major caveats.

[167] So it's really not a team job.

[168] So that's why you can be at home four out of five days a week.

[169] The second point was that after the end of the study, they then ask employees to re -decide where they wanted to work from home or come back into the office.

[170] And half of the employees said after spending nine months at home, they didn't like it.

[171] They felt isolated and lonely and they volunteered to come back into the office.

[172] So for me, the warnings from, you know, the COVID experiment is A, the type of working from home at all.

[173] about now is very extreme.

[174] It's full -time, five days a week.

[175] It should note that less than 5 % of Americans currently do that.

[176] Lots of people work from home a day a week, but very few people work from home full -time.

[177] It's kind of like comparing going to the gym sporadically with marathon training.

[178] So it's pretty extreme.

[179] And B, as you say, we tested employees that don't need to spend time together, and most people do.

[180] And C, the COVID threat could well go on for months and months, I really worry about a big tick -up in people getting depressed, mental health issues, which leads to health issues more generally because of the isolation it could lead to.

[181] My prediction is we'll find that people that do, you know, routine jobs may perform okay at home, but for the majority of us, I think it's going to be pretty painful personally with all the loneliness, and I suspect will be pretty damaging for productivity, particularly as time goes on.

[182] So I think if it's one or two weeks, it wouldn't be so bad, but if it stretches on to three to six months, I think it's going to be hugely damaging economically.

[183] As you gather that data, and I suspect a lot of companies are doing this, you can get a sense of, well, what is the productivity loss, if any, from having people work at home?

[184] Toby Moskowitz again.

[185] And this might be useful for when, you know, when you're hiring employees, some of them want to, let's say, come to the office three days a week and work at home two days a week.

[186] Sometimes there's pushback on that, but it's not really backed by data.

[187] This will give us a chance to make that assessment, and this might be a nice way.

[188] to force everybody to actually run this experiment and see what happens.

[189] I think another thing that's going to be damaged in the long run, actually, is if everyone's working from home, there's not going to be that kind of workplace discussions, coffee, table discussions, lunchtime talk.

[190] And most of that, it turns out, is important for long run innovation.

[191] So day to day, we can get along with, you know, if you're dealing with the same current customers or same ideas.

[192] But when you examine businesses or scientists or even the way I do my own research.

[193] A lot of that creativity comes from idle time and relaxed discussion with colleagues, and that's all gone.

[194] So I also worry that, you know, five, ten years out from now, we will see this as another luring and long -run growth rate because we've taken a big hit to innovation.

[195] You know a lot about management and leadership and firms that are successful and unsuccessful.

[196] What do you think might be learned along those lines from the COVID -19 situation?

[197] So if you have a great manager that's very organized that can deal with change that inspires their employees, they can survive this.

[198] But I think a chaotic and disorganized firm could literally fall apart.

[199] And in fact, already we've started to see bankruptcy start to head up.

[200] Is there anything you can point to that really good leaders do or don't do in a crisis?

[201] Well, one narrow piece of advice around working from home would be to try and regularly check in with your employees.

[202] So it's an unusual thing to do, but we're in unusual times.

[203] You could easily set up every day, you know, beginning of the day, end of the day, 10, 15 minutes, face -to -face, one -on -one Skype call and just, you know, to the fact, it's going to be really important for employees to feel like somebody's there that cares about the misocious as they're there.

[204] It may mean that managers are going to lose, frankly, you know, three, four hours a day on these one -on -one meetings.

[205] But I feel without that they could, A, lose contact.

[206] and B employees could become quite seriously depressed and lonely.

[207] Well, it's the same argument that people had with the school closing.

[208] So it's very costly to close the school.

[209] People work.

[210] Now what do you do with your kids?

[211] The kids aren't learning.

[212] I get all that.

[213] Those are costs.

[214] I think people are making the wrong comparison, though.

[215] You can't compare the cost of doing this versus not doing it.

[216] Not doing it's not an option.

[217] The question is you do it now for a shorter period of time or you do it later for a much longer period of time.

[218] All the things you're mentioning are definite costs.

[219] I just don't think we can avoid them at this point.

[220] Many people, including us on this show, have kind of complained about or agitated against the standard set up with meetings in corporate America.

[221] We have a lot of meetings, and many people feel that those meetings are beyond not productive, but actually onerous and intrusive.

[222] Do you have any thoughts on whether this might change meeting culture in any way?

[223] Well, nobody hates meetings more than professors, that's for sure.

[224] But everybody feels this way.

[225] I'll give you an example.

[226] I had at the university today a couple of meetings scheduled that if I wasn't coming in to do this, I would have canceled completely.

[227] Instead, I said, well, let's not all get together in a room.

[228] That seems stupid at this time.

[229] Why don't we try this on Zoom, which is just a, you know, teleconference?

[230] It worked just fine.

[231] I mean, initially there was a little awkwardness where people introduced themselves and a few of the, you know, I would call them the old schoolers, said, well, this is why we don't like these things.

[232] See how awkward is.

[233] Once we got into it, the meeting was far more efficient, and what was slated for a half -hour meeting took 10 minutes, and we resolved it quickly.

[234] Many people hate commuting, and most people in the next, you know, period of time, weeks, months, are going to be commuting a lot less.

[235] Once we return or if and when we return to normalcy, do you think it's going to be hard to get people to get back on that commuting wagon?

[236] Nobody likes commuting.

[237] It's actually the number one thing on surveys that people say they hate the most.

[238] And I think the longer this goes, you'll have more requests for, hey, look, I could do this commute three days a week, but not five.

[239] As we know, for the last 20 years, the prices of property in the center of cities have searched.

[240] Young people in particular want to live in downtown areas.

[241] If suddenly we switch to working from home, you could easily see that reversing.

[242] So I could easily see there being kind of satellite towns, but they would all be relatively cheaper and we could.

[243] could spread out more uniformly.

[244] So yeah, I think for the housing market, working from home is a big mass rollout to cut property price in the center of cities.

[245] I'm curious, you know, once people are ordered to work from home, and then all of a sudden they're not having to commute, they're not having to tuck in a shirt, et cetera.

[246] Maybe they don't even change their underwear.

[247] I don't know.

[248] Do you think getting some of those people back to work, especially back to the commute every day, will be difficult.

[249] I've talked to a lot of firms in the U .S. and international about working from home.

[250] They're kind of reluctant to do it.

[251] They're nervous that they let the genie out the bottle and you know, it's hard to reverse it.

[252] I actually think this experience is going to force a lot more serious thinking about working from home and see a big spike up, some of which will definitely be beneficial in the long run.

[253] These are just a few and perhaps the most predictable of the countless economic and social side effects we'll be seeing from the COVID -19 response.

[254] What are you seeing?

[255] Let us know at Radio at Freakonomics .com.

[256] Coming up after the break, how will education work with schools and universities suddenly shifting to online teaching?

[257] And if you are in desperate need of a silver lining, well, there is one.

[258] Clearly, the epidemic was causing an immense amount of harm on the ground, but it was also reducing air pollution.

[259] That's coming up right after this.

[260] social distancing to diminish the spread of COVID -19 means that we're all supposed to limit our interaction with other people as much as possible.

[261] Some of us, maybe most of us, will find this incredibly hard.

[262] The late economist Gary Becker made a career of studying behaviors that most economists didn't think much about, including addiction.

[263] And what did Becker argue is the most addictive thing in the world?

[264] Other people.

[265] We are, for the most part, social animals.

[266] What kind of animals will we be without the socializing?

[267] We're about to find out.

[268] One of the biggest changes right now, one of the biggest unplanned experiments of the COVID -19 era, has to do with remote teaching and learning.

[269] Schools and universities across the U .S. and elsewhere have been shut down.

[270] Yeah, Stanford closed.

[271] Yeah, that's what they've done here at Yale, too.

[272] Those, again, are the economists, Nicholas.

[273] Bloom and Toby Moskowitz.

[274] We're talking about COVID -19 as a natural experiment that will allow people like you to measure the efficacy of remote teaching.

[275] So can you envision actually doing that study or someone doing that study, what kind of data would be needed, what kind of time frame would be useful, et cetera?

[276] You may compare courses to, say, with courses taught in person last year.

[277] So you may say, look, we've got 10 years of basically the same course.

[278] And then suddenly this year we teach you online.

[279] What do the grades look like?

[280] what do the long -run outcomes look like?

[281] And Stanford, for example, Econ 1, which is one of our key courses, was taught in full spring and winter quarters.

[282] So you could look at the Econ 1, seems that took it face -to -face last quarter versus the ones next quarter they're going to take it entirely online and see how they do in years two, three, and four.

[283] And what's your suspected conclusion?

[284] Do you think that there are some kind of antiquated inefficiencies in the system that could be, you know, eliminated?

[285] And even though it'd be a shame that it took something like, to produce this kind of change that there might be a lot of benefits to some forms of remote learning?

[286] You know, I'm not that optimistic that remote learning is going to be that successful.

[287] The reason is from personal experience.

[288] I feel a lot of my value added is what I'll call a personal trainer effect, you know, giving students motivation.

[289] You're forcing people to focus for an hour and a half.

[290] For example, probably the biggest single improvement in my teaching was the year that I banned laptops and cell phones from being used in the class.

[291] And, you know, It's miraculous.

[292] Suddenly everyone pays attention.

[293] Whereas when it's offline, it's so easy to get distracted by, you know, watching the football or seeing the news or watching the stock market.

[294] So let me pretend to be cynical for a moment and say, well, the kind of person who would measure this effect long term, in other words, remote teaching actually brings some gains and that might eliminate a lot of live professorial activity, the kind of people who would come up with that are professors.

[295] So is this in the best?

[296] interest or in the interest at all of anyone to actually study and come to that kind of conclusion?

[297] Yes, absolutely.

[298] I think, you know, as economists, you always want progress.

[299] So imagine professors can suddenly teach much more efficiently by recording a class once than having it played on video.

[300] Then, of course, we can spend our time more one -on -one with students.

[301] My experience, the highest value added is sitting down with individual students and going through their research papers.

[302] And if we could spend our hours every day on that, I think it would be much more valuable for students actually then just reciting material they could learn out of a textbook.

[303] So many universities have already spent a lot of time and a fair amount of money putting their courses online.

[304] And then there are for -profit firms, Coursera and others, who, you know, have pretty robust platforms.

[305] And I see that the take -up numbers are not insubstantial, but considering how difficult and expensive and timely it is to attend college, to go.

[306] to four years worth of college, I've been shocked at how low the take -up rates are for online learning.

[307] And I'm curious whether you think that this might adjust that.

[308] Here's my view on this, and just as from 25 years of teaching myself, I find if you're just teaching facts and methods, that can be done almost as well online as it can live.

[309] You could even argue maybe even better online because you can supplement it with video, materials, and you can record it, right, and get it perfect.

[310] If you're trying to teach someone how to think and you're trying to teach them, let's say, how to do research or how to ask an interesting question and get a scientific answer, that's much more hands -on.

[311] So, you know, if I'm teaching basic investments, what's a stock, what's a bond, I think I can do that just as well online as I probably can in the classroom.

[312] But if you're talking about training students how to think, right, and how to really, you know, whether it's writing an English essay or writing a poem or, you know, you know, coming up with a computer program that, you know, does X or, you know, thinking about how to price some obscure private equity firm.

[313] That, I think, requires a lot more back and forth and a lot more interactions.

[314] And I suspect that the reason that we still have the university model is that's what they're trying to do.

[315] What I tell my students is, I'm trying to teach you how to think because what I teach you today may not be relevant, five, ten, twenty years from now.

[316] But if you know how to think about it, you'll be able to figure it out.

[317] You know, when LeBron James, It's a very terrible analogy.

[318] But, you know, there's a reason that basketball players want to play in front of fans.

[319] I have to just say whenever an economist compares himself to LeBron James, I'm all ears, okay?

[320] I wasn't going there, I swear.

[321] But making a very poor analogy.

[322] Well, the analogy is okay, but it's on a very, very different scale, which is, you know, I think when you're teaching, you're reacting to your students.

[323] You see their faces, you see their questions, you see confusion.

[324] Sometimes you see a light go on.

[325] that's very difficult to do, even though you see their faces on the flat screen, it's not quite the same.

[326] And for an athlete, it must be a hundred times like that, right?

[327] And I sort of get where that sense comes from.

[328] So now, it's in my interest to say that that's the case.

[329] If it turns out we could teach just as effectively remotely, well, that's a whole different paradigm for a guy like me. Yeah, for academics, it's been, in some sense, a real opportunity to explore other ways of doing things.

[330] That's Marshall Burke.

[331] the environmental economist at Stanford?

[332] So all the conferences I was going to go to this spring have been canceled.

[333] I've sent my lab group home, so I hold my lab meetings online.

[334] We've had speaker candidates online.

[335] And I was skeptical that it would work well initially.

[336] And actually, I think it's working quite nicely.

[337] And I really hope that we learn that lesson.

[338] And then we do some of these substitutions.

[339] There's no reason I need to fly to the East Coast many times a year to give talks.

[340] Why can't we just do it remotely?

[341] I think this will give us the opportunity to explore the benefits of these other modes of economic production.

[342] So I think this is going to generate huge amounts of experimentation and teaching, and in the long run, some of it would be good, but it's very painful right now.

[343] You know, when we think about schooling, especially in the early ages, socialization seems to be a big benefit, or at least that's what people say.

[344] So right now we're seeing all levels of schools being closed around the U .S. and in other places from pre