Taking out the trash
The familiar black trash bins sit at the end of every driveway on my street every Friday morning. The only change of pick up days is if there is a holiday. These bins are provided to us by the city (of course paid for with tax dollars). If we don’t get our bins out on time, we miss trash pick up and there are no “special” services if you call to whine to the public works folks about it. It occurred to me today that without rules about trash, my neighborhood would be full of rats, raccoons, and other hungry wild animals. My property value would drop, and we might be afraid to let our pets outside or take a walk in the neighborhood because of vermin. When people leave a pile of garbage or trash on the curbside that does not fit into our special bins, it doesn’t get picked up by the city trash collector. It sits there until the offender hauls it off themselves or they pay someone to come and haul it off to the dump, The old fashioned “trip to the dump” isn’t what it use to be…our load of garbage is weighed and charged by the pound. We pay our city taxes for a trash collection benefit, but there are a lot of rules attached. I looked up and down my street this morning, and not one driveway was without their trash bin at the roadside. Not one. Because there are penalties and inconveniences if you do not obey the rules, people just do it.
I don’t know all of my neighbors, and I don’t know their political leanings (except for the ones who put those grotesque Trump flags out during the last election), but I do know they care about getting their trash picked up and keeping this neighborhood decent and clean. In order to accomplish neighborhood hygiene, we all have to live by the rules of garbage pick up in the city.
What would happen if they decided that these rules infringe on their freedom, or that it is unconstitutional to make them have trash collection on Friday (or whatever day their nighborhood pick up is). My guess is that the neighborhood would go in the crapper.
Can anyone else see that this is similar to what is actually happening to our healthcare system because of COVID and the freedom lovers who have decided they will not get vaccinated? Should we start to financially penalize unvaccinated patients who get sick with COVID. I’m starting to think so. Their actions are stressing our healthcare system to the hilt…and people with other health issues cannot get needed care. Also, we are all paying for their care…all of us, in one way or another, because they want their freedoms…to not vaccinate.
Is this whole country going into the crapper because of COVID? Just yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it was unconstitutional to mandate vaccines or weekly testing for employers of over 100 people. These justices have no science education, or other expertise in the control of infectious diseases. They are not statisticians. They do not have entire panels and boards of experts advising them on the pandemic. The SCOTUS should not be making any ruling on a pandemic…that should only be done with the guidance of experts. It is interesting to me that the employees of the Supreme court DO have a mandate for vaccination/or weekly testing in house.
So, the SCOTUS just gave employers back their FREEDOMS (or DUMBS) to not have COVID rules. What will happen now? More employees will get sick with COVID and spread it to other workers. Their workplaces will be contaminated by COVID. People will go out sick and their productivity will suffer. And most importantly, more will die. How many? Thousands…tens of thousands?
Every single one of us has been brought up with rules. We learn them almost from the time we are born. It is because we are of superior intelligence….superior to animals and plants. We know there are boundaries in our lives and we live within them and because of them. We have rules in school, rules at work, rules in our families, rules in our communities, States and country. We have rules about driving a car or owning a gun and paying taxes. Rules are what keep us safe and in the case of pandemic….alive.
I have always thought that this was the greatest country in the world. But by my observations, that seems to be slipping away. We need to do better at taking out the trash.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/politics/supreme-court-biden-vaccine-mandate.html
https://www.bangormaine.gov/trash
http://www.civics.ks.gov/kansas/citizenship/responsibilities-of-citizens.html
