One of the only joys left of living in New York is the fact one can drop off a dirty laundry in the morning and pick up a bag of clean, folded joy by nightfall. I was just finishing up paying at the Laundromat the other day when the Chinese man that runs it said: “Lots of our neighbours have moved out.”
This is the first time he has said anything to me in over four years that wasn’t ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’, including the time in 2017 when I asked him his thoughts on how to clean vegan leather and he just walked away to eat a bowl of soup.
“Have they?” I replied. He was looking at the floor but something told me he was trying very hard to say something to me and I should listen. So I put down the bag, which put him at ease.
“Many people are gone,” he said. “Many not coming back. Six months ago we had a full store. Dry-cleaning, washing, drying. Now…” He gestured behind him to the near empty room, its racks empty and shelves bare except for two small bags of laundry. I noticed that the desk where his wife repairs buttons wasn’t there anymore.
“It’s a very difficult time,” I said.
“We haven’t made any profit in three months,” he said, glancing at me. “Everything we made goes to the landlord for rent. Everything. Now no one needs dry cleaning or new clothes, because no one is going anywhere. No weddings, no graduations, not even parties. I don’t understand: what to do? I don’t even have food. I bring a free meal from my child’s school because what else can we do?”
He looked visibly upset and so I just stood there.
“Anyway,” he said, regaining his composure, “I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to you. Thank you for your support.” I reminded him I wouldn’t have clothes without him so it’s a win for everyone, and he laughed a hollow laugh, and I left.
The interaction stayed with me not simply because it’s the only one I had this week with another living, breathing human, but because I knew as well as he did that things were not likely to change.
When my family and friends check up on me they usually express their worry that I am in New York living alone. It hasn’t been easy, but then this hasn’t been an easy 12 weeks for anyone anywhere. So much has changed, so little is guaranteed. This Monday marked 100 days of the quarantine here, and the city is taking its first tentative, paranoid steps to opening up. Through it all we have globally ducked down as opinions, conspiracies, facts and theories crisscrossed overhead like bullets in a warzone.
I have never argued with people about statistical modeling as much as I have in the last 12 weeks, but the one thing it has shown me to be true is how destructively selective people’s reasoning skills can be. It’s come up because we now depend on other people’s actions to be able to survive an opportunistic virus that doesn’t care if you the only reason you want out of quarantine is to work out and go to a restaurant. When I first met resistance from people over the idea that the lockdown would be a reality for as long as the virus was a threat, I thought I was being too harsh, that I wasn’t allowing for people’s feelings when condemning them for being morons. Could I be wrong? Am I overreacting?
A good way to find out if you’re opinion is BS is to ask yourself if you arrived there after being persuaded by a factual argument (infections are rising, routine public gathering make this worse) or if you wanted something to be true (virus isn’t deadly, a lockdown is an overreaction, gyms should reopen, everyone panicking is lying or cowardly) and then cherry-picked facts to suit your argument. I didn’t want a lockdown, but when the facts supported one, so did I. What I found with most people advocating the opposite relied on a conclusion before facts. They didn’t want to admit a sudden and abrupt shift in our common reality, and so chose, consciously or not, to sustain a fictional one of their own.
One is a decision, the other a delusion. At no time before has it been more imperative to know the difference.
That the economy is “reopening” here is not a magic spell which transports us back to February 2020 with bustling shops. I won’t go into another shop without thinking about a virus for a while, and this doesn’t change simply because the government gave me permission to try. But I am far less scared than I would be if I lived in a place - like Pakistan or Florida - which denied the facts for convenience and are now sentencing their citizens to chance.
This morning the laundromat closed down permanently. There is no “going back”, not here, not anywhere. To keep insisting that the world hasn’t radically changed is not only irresponsible, but wildly dangerous. Places like New York may be different but they will recover, and the reason they will is because when it came down to it they confronted facts and didn’t hide their heads in the sand. If even the Saudis can acknowledge it then there isn’t even enough sand to hide anyway.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
This is the first time he has said anything to me in over four years that wasn’t ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’, including the time in 2017 when I asked him his thoughts on how to clean vegan leather and he just walked away to eat a bowl of soup.
“Have they?” I replied. He was looking at the floor but something told me he was trying very hard to say something to me and I should listen. So I put down the bag, which put him at ease.
“Many people are gone,” he said. “Many not coming back. Six months ago we had a full store. Dry-cleaning, washing, drying. Now…” He gestured behind him to the near empty room, its racks empty and shelves bare except for two small bags of laundry. I noticed that the desk where his wife repairs buttons wasn’t there anymore.
“It’s a very difficult time,” I said.
“We haven’t made any profit in three months,” he said, glancing at me. “Everything we made goes to the landlord for rent. Everything. Now no one needs dry cleaning or new clothes, because no one is going anywhere. No weddings, no graduations, not even parties. I don’t understand: what to do? I don’t even have food. I bring a free meal from my child’s school because what else can we do?”
He looked visibly upset and so I just stood there.
“Anyway,” he said, regaining his composure, “I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to you. Thank you for your support.” I reminded him I wouldn’t have clothes without him so it’s a win for everyone, and he laughed a hollow laugh, and I left.
The interaction stayed with me not simply because it’s the only one I had this week with another living, breathing human, but because I knew as well as he did that things were not likely to change.
A good way to find out if your opinion is BS is to ask yourself if you arrived there after being persuaded by a factual argument (infections are rising, routine public gathering make this worse) or if you wanted something to be true (virus isn’t deadly, a lockdown is an overreaction, gyms should reopen, everyone panicking is lying or cowardly) and then cherry-picked facts to suit your argument
When my family and friends check up on me they usually express their worry that I am in New York living alone. It hasn’t been easy, but then this hasn’t been an easy 12 weeks for anyone anywhere. So much has changed, so little is guaranteed. This Monday marked 100 days of the quarantine here, and the city is taking its first tentative, paranoid steps to opening up. Through it all we have globally ducked down as opinions, conspiracies, facts and theories crisscrossed overhead like bullets in a warzone.
I have never argued with people about statistical modeling as much as I have in the last 12 weeks, but the one thing it has shown me to be true is how destructively selective people’s reasoning skills can be. It’s come up because we now depend on other people’s actions to be able to survive an opportunistic virus that doesn’t care if you the only reason you want out of quarantine is to work out and go to a restaurant. When I first met resistance from people over the idea that the lockdown would be a reality for as long as the virus was a threat, I thought I was being too harsh, that I wasn’t allowing for people’s feelings when condemning them for being morons. Could I be wrong? Am I overreacting?
A good way to find out if you’re opinion is BS is to ask yourself if you arrived there after being persuaded by a factual argument (infections are rising, routine public gathering make this worse) or if you wanted something to be true (virus isn’t deadly, a lockdown is an overreaction, gyms should reopen, everyone panicking is lying or cowardly) and then cherry-picked facts to suit your argument. I didn’t want a lockdown, but when the facts supported one, so did I. What I found with most people advocating the opposite relied on a conclusion before facts. They didn’t want to admit a sudden and abrupt shift in our common reality, and so chose, consciously or not, to sustain a fictional one of their own.
One is a decision, the other a delusion. At no time before has it been more imperative to know the difference.
That the economy is “reopening” here is not a magic spell which transports us back to February 2020 with bustling shops. I won’t go into another shop without thinking about a virus for a while, and this doesn’t change simply because the government gave me permission to try. But I am far less scared than I would be if I lived in a place - like Pakistan or Florida - which denied the facts for convenience and are now sentencing their citizens to chance.
This morning the laundromat closed down permanently. There is no “going back”, not here, not anywhere. To keep insisting that the world hasn’t radically changed is not only irresponsible, but wildly dangerous. Places like New York may be different but they will recover, and the reason they will is because when it came down to it they confronted facts and didn’t hide their heads in the sand. If even the Saudis can acknowledge it then there isn’t even enough sand to hide anyway.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com