Fightback Covid-19 : Lessons from Civil War
All you need is this free shopping calculator and a spreadsheet.
Like everyone else in the United Kingdom, I am confined to my home, and most likely will be for the foreseeable future. When the outbreak began, and as the government rhetoric slowly started to increase towards the inevitable lock down which now we find ourselves in, an eerie sense of deja-vu came upon me.
I grew up in Lebanon in the 80s, a country stricken by a bloody civil war for 15 years, most of which constituted my childhood. One of my earliest memories is sitting on my mother’s lap in a basement while my father argued with one of our neighbours who thought it was a good idea to bring a gas bonbon to heat their food. White noise that night, like many nights, was the distant sound of Howitzar mortar bombs and AK-47 bullet rounds. Curfews and lockdowns were common, and so was lockdowns.
That was almost 30 years ago, and as I stood in front of my local corner shop in my London suburb looking at their A-sign reading “we have pasta” I thought to myself, despite the war in Lebanon, we never really ran out of food, and somehow, the economy kept going, and the world didn’t end. I can’t do much about the shock to our civil liberties and freedom in the UK, but I certainly have a few thoughts on how to fightback against this invisible enemy.
- Calculate how much food and supplies you really, really need (handy free spreadsheet included!)
It doesn’t matter what sort of items you feel comfortable in your cupboard, basement or shed, but what matters is how you consume. For example, every time you use hand sanitiser, you use about two drops of liquid gel, which is equivalent to about 0.1 ml. The standard bottle of sanitiser is 250ml , which means 2,500 times. So, assuming you use the hand sanitiser 25 times a day (i.e. once every hour), it should last one person about 100 days. Given we are asleep for 7–8 hours, are home for another 3, and our use of door handles and other high exposure places surely isn’t every 30 minutes (I sit at my desk working for hours on end with maybe one toilet break). You get the idea, we really don’t need 10 bottles of sanitiser. Same applies for pasta, toilet paper, beer, etc. I’ve come up with a handy calculator that shows that we really don’t need to panic on food:
Even if you use larger/smaller amounts or have bigger/smaller families than my family of three, the calculation still shows that we should stop panic buying. There really is, enough for everyone. As much as we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated beings, we are still creatures of habit, and our eating habits are very easily forecast. Of the list of items above, you can easily survive a week with these basic supplies, in the unlikely event of a total shutdown that closes even grocery stores, which is extremely unlikely. Think of others when you are staring at those shelves in your local Tesco, and mostly of those who can’t shop at anytime of the day because they are not home, but on the front line, saving lives.
I’ve made this Google Spreadsheet public so if someone finds it useful they can copy it and add their own to it. It’s basic, but the purpose is to make a point: we don’t need 10 bottles of sanitizer and 48 toilet rolls.
2. How to save your business (template included ! )
I was watching a report by the BBC this evening about hairdressers, and according to the BBC, there are about 250,000 hairdressers in the UK, of which 54% are self-employed. This applies to many other businesses and self-employed personnel who are the hardest hit in this situation. I understand that for many they will be short on cash as their business will effectively grind to a halt. However, if we take hairdressers as a case in point, this can be a possibility for “forward booking”. Everyone, such as myself, will need a haircut once I am actually allowed to leave my house, and the hair saloons re-open. However, I expect that everyone in my neighborhood will also be needing a haircut as well by the end of it. I suggested to my barber that he reach out to his customers (via email/whatsapp for those who he knows, facebook for those he doesn’t, or just posting a flier on his door for those on their daily exercise single outing) asking for people to pre-book a slot for a haircut from mid-April, and offering a reduced rate for those who pay upfront, like a voucher, to which they can cash in whenever we are out of this mess. It’s a win-win for both, my barber still makes some income, guarantees that he will stay in business, and I get a discounted haircut. This can also apply to many service providers who provide essential services. Alot of people stuck at home will be thinking of home improvements, like plumbing, painting, etc. This is the best moment to reach out to them with offers, because they will be thinking about it. In other words, create a forward looking order book, and forecast projected revenue. All you need is a google spreadsheet (free) , a paypal account (free) and a phone (practically free). Large businesses do this all the time. It’s called “Accounting and forecasting”. Restaurants and coffee shops can do the same, as after 12 weeks of being home-bound, there will be a bonanza of going out by everyone.
At least we have 24 hour electricity, hot water, and no bullets are being shot, all of which were luxuries in Lebanon. We also didn’t have a government, or a central bank offering stimulus packages. The Lebanese people still managed to shugg along. The British shouldn’t have any problems doing the same, if they can keep calm!
