I don't understand this sentence. the account you DO have 2FA on should offer more than one 2FA mechanism, and the printout of the backup security codes.
I also don't understand why you don't have 2FA on your secondary gmail accounts, but that isn't material to the point: Any google account which does have 2FA should (as I understand it) support multiple modalities of 2nd factor simultaneously so you don't get cut off simply by losing a phone, if you enable the alternates. I mentioned two, there is the third, the yubikey type option which I think is now in general release, but comes at a $cost.
Maybe I misunderstand something in the points you're raising. Maybe its a nuance of the loss of the primary device and the use of backup recovery accounts, but the way I read it, the backup account recovery path is AFTER you explore alternate 2FA paths to account recovery.
I have my TOTP on two devices because I kept the QR code to bootstrap and also used the migration tool in google authenticator. I also have them in BitWarden. And I have the security one-time codes printed out. At this point, loss of a single device in the two I have to authenticate with is an irritation. This kind of feels like a 3-2-1 story: three forms of authentication, two online, one offline.
From personal experience. I have two @gmail and a hosted by google and all of them show me both device and totp enabled. afaik it came for free. Admittedly I turned 2fa on as soon as it was GA years ago and did not have it automatically applied so maybe the backup codes and TOTP thing is different.
I also don't understand why you don't have 2FA on your secondary gmail accounts, but that isn't material to the point: Any google account which does have 2FA should (as I understand it) support multiple modalities of 2nd factor simultaneously so you don't get cut off simply by losing a phone, if you enable the alternates. I mentioned two, there is the third, the yubikey type option which I think is now in general release, but comes at a $cost.
Maybe I misunderstand something in the points you're raising. Maybe its a nuance of the loss of the primary device and the use of backup recovery accounts, but the way I read it, the backup account recovery path is AFTER you explore alternate 2FA paths to account recovery.
I have my TOTP on two devices because I kept the QR code to bootstrap and also used the migration tool in google authenticator. I also have them in BitWarden. And I have the security one-time codes printed out. At this point, loss of a single device in the two I have to authenticate with is an irritation. This kind of feels like a 3-2-1 story: three forms of authentication, two online, one offline.