No Masks, No Gas

Last week saw some a glimmer of hope on the pandemic front when the CDC issued new guidelines for wearing masks.  For the fully vaccinated, masks are no longer required.

Now there are some caveats, addendum, conditionals, quid pro quos, etc etc but pretty much, if you are fully vaccinated, you may forego the mask. 

I am fully vaccinated and I'm still wearing my mask.

I don't want to be mistaken for a knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, MAGA hat wearing moron who thought the whole pandemic was just a thing to make Li'l Donnie look bad. 

I don't want to be mixing it up with anti-vaxxers who still think the COVID-19 vaccine is a secret plot by Bill Gates to inject us with micro chips or some shit like that.

And while things are indeed looking up with infection rates and the number of deaths on the decline, COVID-19 is still a thing and people are still getting sick. 

So I'm still sticking with my mask. 

But just as we're finally getting used to the idea of some freedom of movement, the Fortress of Ineptitude had to go on a sort of lockdown for a different reason: a lack of gas.

Colonial Pipeline, a major distributor of fuel, got hit with a ransomware attack by...

Wait! Am I reading this right?

Darkseid?

OK, no. Not that Darkseid. 

Anyway, the hack by Dark Side caused a minor hiccup in the distribution of gasoline.

The PANIC over the hack causing a minor hiccup in the distribution of gasoline caused a shortage of gasoline.

Gas stations all across North Carolina were running out of gas because of people in a panic over possible gas shortages. 

I didn't want to be one of those people in the panic line but our Camry did seriously need gas with less than a quarter of a tank. I told Andrea we needed to carefully manage where we drove to conserve our supply of gas in the car. 

The next day after the first wave of panic buying had subsided and some stations had gas, we sent a family member out with the Camry to get gas.

Rosie is a good dog. 

Apparently Colonial Pipeline is up and running with the biggest threat to the supply of gas being the public in a panic.  

Which brings me back to the pandemic where it seems the worst of our travails over the last year have been exacerbated by the fears and ignorance of humanity. 

It's a cynical view but one that is born out time and time again over human history.

Or as Agent K put it in Men In Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."