What's Next In Michael Bloomberg's New York? Bubonic Plague?

When Mayor Bloomberg was first faced with complaints from city residents about the lack of snow removal after this year's post-Christmas blizzard, his response was laconic at best as he...

...urged New Yorkers not to panic -- saying the city "is going on."

"It's like every other day," he said, noting that people should relax and take in a Broadway show to combat the weather woes.

Sure sounds like a great idea - if you want to get infected by bubonic plague.

The photo below was taken this afternoon on 53rd street between Broadway and 8th avenues, about 10 yards away from the marquee for "Jersey Boys" and almost directly across the street from a Beatles tribute show called "Rain":

Being that the business on the far left is a diner, and on the right is a bar, one would have to suspect most of that wall of garbage is food. Note that I am taking a picture from behind another wall of garbage across the street (in front of an apartment building - perhaps more food/household waste?), from which I heard quite the rustling sound. Needless to say, I didn't stick around to see what was making it, especially as someone who has read quite a bit about the Black Death:

Plague is primarily a disease of rodents. Infection of human beings most often occurs when a person is bitten by an infected flea that has fed on an infected rodent. The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it is unable to satisfy its hunger. During the feeding process, blood cannot flow into the blocked stomach, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The Bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new host, and the flea eventually dies from starvation.

And of course, there is this:

Human infection [of the bubonic plague] usually occurs in areas of unsanitary living conditions where the humans come into close contact with rats....

See the picture above of life in Mayor Bloomberg's New York, and tell me if you think it fits the description of "unsanitary". As for the rats, well...they are in the pile, and having a freaking field day...

But don't worry, once your oozing pustules begin to form, the Mayor will sneer at you and recycle the same responses he gave to snowed-in New Yorkers who died while waiting for emergency service vehicles to navigate impassable streets:

"We won't get to everybody every time," he said. "Yelling about it and complaining doesn't help."

Asked if he had regrets...Hizzoner quipped sarcastically, "I regret everything in the world."

Sarcastic sneers, "tough shit", and excuses - expect more of the same when we start dying en masse from the plague. New York's fate will be different from Detroit's, but to the naked eye, the results will be identical, as both city's deaths can be traced back to something more esoteric....modern liberalism.

Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
The Plague

The public lacked, in short, standards of comparison. It was only as time passed and the steady rise in the death-rate could not be ignored, that public opinion became alive to the truth.
The Plague