It affects different folks differently (which is a truism). It’s obvious that people should have an emergency fund based on standard advice in pf and also here, but not everyone has the capacity to do that, whether due to obligations or income. Some folks will start tapping into cc debt, and others may go on unemployment temporarily (believe it has to be paid back once the shutdown ends).

There’s the financial aspect, there’s also the people’s lives aspect. In the media there are stories of holidays being ruined - this can be true in regular areas as one of my friends was laid off right before the holidays. It is easy to be cavalier about disruptions like this to people’s lives and careers when it’s just an idea, it aucks when it affects you or people around you.

One thing I think is that for many folks the lessons of events like these don’t stick very well. With things like the financial crisis of 2008, the fraud that even banks like Wells Fargo perpetrated and probably still do, and the disruption caused by these shutdowns and similar event was (companies closing down) people kinda forget what created them. But I do think that if folks didn’t already have an emergency fund for situations like these, hopefully many folks will after. Because I think this will be the new normal, for a while.