"Gas could top $5 soon"? Already over $6 here.

Over the past few weeks many articles in the national news have breathlessly warned that $5/gallon gas could be in the future. I get that for many parts of the country that's a huge increase, but in California it's been the reality for a while already. Back in November already I was seeing $5.xx for higher grades of gas at name-brand stores, even when prices for the same gas were in the $3s on the East Coast.

This past week I filled up rental cars in Las Vegas, NV and Amarillo, TX for less than $4/gallon for base grade gas. I paid $3.97/gal in Vegas and $3.79/gal in Amarillo. When I arrived home in the Bay Area Monday night I saw that prices were already over $6/gallon for all grades of gas at name-brand stores. Costco's still noticeably cheaper but already more expensive than after last week's 20% price surge. But Costco's cheaper than name-brand stations everywhere. I'm making as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as I can. Folks in the Bay Area (and most of California, for that matter) who don't have memberships or don't have the time or inclination to shop around for the cheapest gas are already paying over $6 per gallon.

2 Years of "Lockdown"

It was 2 years ago today that several Bay Area counties announced closures in the face of burgeoning Coronavirus pandemic. Officially named "Shelter in Place", these policies rapidly became known as lockdowns, as they spread from first the 7 million residents of the Bay Area, to all 39 million in California, to many other states as well.

I put the term lockdown in quotes in the title because it's a misnomer. In popular understanding a lockdown is an requirement to stay in a particular place, enforced by authorities. Jails go into lockdown mode when there's violence. Inmates are confined to their cells, and are punished severely— up to being shot on sight— for being anywhere else.

The Shelter In Place policies, soon renamed Safer At Home, were a far cry from that. Certain types of businesses and gatherings were closed for health reasons, and others were allowed to operate on a limited basis. Individuals weren't barred from leaving their homes, though.

"You’re not containing people, it’s facilities," NY Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters when explaining what a Containment Zone (another misnomer) was.

That's an important distinction because in some countries, like in France in March 2020, people out in public needed to show police their documents proving they had valid need to be out. France was hardly the only country; a few other EU nations did the same. And China notoriously barricaded people in their homes to prevent them from leaving.

Then, too, while today marks the 2nd anniversary of the "lockdown" in the US, closures didn't happen all at once. A day or two earlier several states already ordered bars and restaurants to close or cease dine-in operations. That's actually when panic buying at grocery stores started. A few days before that business started to close offices and require employees to work remotely, and school closures became widespread. Two+ weeks before the lockdown concerts and trade shows were being cancelled. Already in late February businesses adopted no-visitors policies in their offices. Two in-person meetings I had scheduled were converted to remote meetings.

Curiously our own personal lockdown/Safer-at-Home began a few days before the official lockdown started. Hawk and I weighed the evidence of the mounting health risks, among them that the WHO declared Coronavirus a pandemic on March 11. We decided on the Friday the 13th to cancel a trip that weekend. On the 15th we decided to stop dining out and to stop shopping except for necessities. Our head start of filling our kitchen pantry a few days ahead of everyone else helped us avoid being squeezed when panic buying set in and store shelves were freakishly empty.