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Lysol, Condoms, and Unexpected Consequences


#1: Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Lysol owner Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC expects the surge in sales. The company believes the general trend to more cleanliness is likely to outlast the corona virus outbreak.

#2: Reckitt's Durex brand, which mainly sells condoms, reported a modest decrease in sales.  

Possible consequences

Of course, cleanliness is a good thing, like salt. Take a salt deprived person, add a dash to his diet, and his health improves. Next day adds two dashes, better still. You can see where this is going -- eventually there will be a day when his health starts declining with more salt and if you keep going, he'll die.  

Excessive cleanliness is not quite that drastic, but it can happen.  Evidence is growing(1) that without reasonable exposure to germs, children are more likely to develop allergies and even auto-immune diseases. Will this generation of children, the "Lysol" generation, grow up more susceptible to these diseases?  Where is that grey line between healthy and unhealthy sanitation in the home? Who knows?

Now, into condoms. One would think that with children at home 24/7, the normal human hobby would be curtailed. An alternative thought is that mother nature cannot be resisted.  With a decrease in condom sales, do we have a baby boomlet in the making? Many countries, particularly advanced ones like Italy, have seen their birth rates decline precipitously, well below replacement rates. Is this a temporary reprieve?  

These are two out of hundreds or even thousands of unpredictable and unknown consequences of the corona virus. For example, technology acceleration is is happening now. It is unprecedented, except perhaps for world war II.  Many businesses have been forced to test "work from home" processes. Do we need as much physical, human concentration in offices are we thought?  How is the office space industry going to be affected?  Like Isaac Newton's creation of calculus at Woolsthorpe in the 1665 plague, today's time away from routine life will seed whole forests of marvelous ideas.   

If you are an investor, there's never a better time to run through scenarios of consequences. For all of us, it is a time to think about how we fit in, how we can improve ourselves, and how we can help others.  2020 marks a turning point in human history.  



Comments? Send to wayarberry@gmail.com



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