For a time when I was younger my mother, sister, and I lived with my Uncle Frank and Aunt Patty in Arizona. Frank was a manager at a Walgreens and worked long hours, so we didn’t really see him too often. But on the odd occasion when we would all go somewhere in his van, he had a little catchphrase he liked to drop on us.
“Click it or ticket,” he would say. Inevitably, this prompt would be met with an eye roll from then-12-year-old me. I always buckled my seat belt. Always. But Uncle Frank’s son was an adult — already moved out, graduated, and employed — and Frank always seemed to view his sister-in-law’s offspring as perpetual toddlers. I get it. He was a few years away from retirement, with a grown kid and a house and a van he’d worked hard to pay off early, and any money he had managed to squirrel away was supposed to pay for time on the golf links, not go to a citation he got because his nephew couldn’t be bothered with wearing a seat belt. Why risk it? Better to remind us.
That phrase, though, comes from a campaign to encourage seat belt use. And if you think Tennesseans see themselves as rough-and-ready, rugged individualists, that Memphians embody the “you can’t tell me nothin’” ethos, boy howdy, let me introduce you to some Arizona wannabe cowboys. They’ll talk about the Wild West, about the showdown at the O.K. Corral, about how tough you have to be to survive in the unforgiving desert. In general, it is safe to say that these are not proponents of government regulations. But no one wants to pay a fee. As far as I know, my Uncle Frank harbors no strong ideals about seat belts one way or the other, but he wasn’t about to pay Maricopa County because of them.
That’s why I think President Joe Biden’s push to mandate vaccines (or weekly Covid tests) for businesses with more than 100 employees, as announced last week, is a good idea. Some people can only be motivated by tangible, predictable negative consequences. Sure, getting sick is a negative consequence, but it might not happen.
Right now, Tennessee leads all 50 states for cases of Covid-19 per capita. Last week, on September 10th, we reported the worst single day and worst week in new cases in the entire length of the still-ongoing pandemic (so far). The Volunteer State is averaging more than 6,800 cases a day, about 100 cases for every 100,000 people. “We’ve had the tools in our hands,” Dr. Diego Hijano, an infectious disease expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told Flyer news editor Toby Sells in last week’s cover story. “But as we keep resisting vaccination and mitigation strategies, it will prolong the time.”
We have the tools to prevent this; they’re accessible. But we’re volunteering to be sick, to die, to put nurses and doctors and now teachers at risk. Not to mention anyone who has a heat stroke, car crash, heart attack, or any other accident or illness that necessitates immediate medical treatment. Sorry, folks, but the ER is full.
Of course, I recognize I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but it feels wrong somehow to see this information roll in, to have this platform, and to say nothing. There are certainly other things I’d like to write about. (Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ panel discussion last week in which he took swings at tax breaks for businesses, for starters. In Memphis, we’re flat-out addicted to PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] deals, and it’s a habit we need to break. But being the most dangerous place in the U.S., when it comes to contracting Covid anyway, seems to be a more immediate priority.) With a great pick-up rate, there must also come great responsibility, as the old alt-weekly editor’s credo goes.
“Parents know better than the government what’s best for their children,” Governor Bill Lee tweeted last month. Governor Lee doesn’t believe the government should govern. The government isn’t a monolith though. There are different branches, different levels. The idea that it’s all one thing — all corrupt, all swamp — just absolves our leaders of the responsibility to provide for those they purport to govern. That’s why we need a federal mandate. Because the whims of a few here are putting all of us at risk, on so many levels. (Again, don’t do anything that might land you in the ER for the foreseeable future.)
So I’m all for a federal mandate, for an expensive ad campaign. You think people didn’t grumble about wearing their seat belts or stepping outside to light up a cigarette?
Click it or ticket, man. Vax it or tax it.
Alexandria Gilliott