Sanitized.

Three years ago I was driving my wife's car in Pennsylvania. I stopped to pick up some goods at Walmart. The Chinese Death Flu was riding high at the time. I realized that she had no hand sanitizer in the car, so I grabbed a bottle to keep in the vehicle. I happened to notice it on Friday when I was using her car again. 

Didn't that take me back. Especially the scent, which is strong but pleasant enough for a hand sanitizer. Lavender? I suppose. 

I remembered that trip to the Walmart, how one of the store's exits had been closed off -- which funneled all customers through the same doors and ensured us being closer together at one point at least, but whatever. Also the masks. The arrows in the aisles. The dots on the floor by the register for social distancing. The plastic sheeting everywhere. The special shopping hours. The nitrile gloves, the weird shortages. All of it. All, apparently, for nothing. 

I don't know about you, but I'm not doing it again. 

The news is panicky about a new variant. Screw that. I'm not discounting it entirely -- three friends of mine over the age of 65 just had it. For one it was his third time with COVID, and he's vaxed out the bazooty. But guess what? All of them survived, even the one with severe physical degenerative issues in a long-term care facility. 

The whole mask thing was a bust. That's not just coming from the right-wing press. We know this, and they still want to start all over with it again. Closing the schools was a literal disaster for the kids. Watch what the teachers' unions do next. One thing for sure, it means we won't be allowed to ditch any of the rules for remote voting, the ones that made it so easy to, er, fortify the 2020 election.

I played along last time because we didn't know better, and the ones who did just lied. Also, I am not the kind of guy who believes in taking stands that inconvenience innocent bystanders. Why demand to shop barefaced and force some put-upon store manager to have to deal with me? He has enough on his plate. But I'm not going through that again, not unless the plague is the real deal, wiping out healthy people in the thousands like the Spanish Flu or the Black Death. So the Wuhan labs better cook up something really hot for our next election year. 

Speaking of which, that bottle of hand sanitizer expired in April 2022, long after my patience with the federal government had. And can you guess where it was manufactured?

Communist China: The cause of -- and treatment for? -- all the world's ills.