I received the following email this evening from OUC, the Orlando Utility Commission. This was about our water usage. Let me quote the entire email.

Dear OUC Customer,

A regional shortage of liquid oxygen linked to the surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations is impacting OUC's ability to treat drinking water. Health systems use liquid oxygen (LOX) in the respiratory treatment of COVID-19 patients, while OUC uses it as part of a water treatment process for ozone generation. Ozone is used to remove hydrogen sulfide, a naturally occurring compound that yields an unpleasant odor, from water pumped from the Lower Floridan Aquifer.

With COVID cases soaring across Florida and the Southeast, OUC fully supports LOX vendors diverting supplies to health systems in Central Florida as a life-saving measure.

With our customers' immediate participation, we may be able to avoid water quality issues.

We are asking all of our water customers without reclaimed water systems to immediately limit irrigating their lawns, and refrain from washing vehicles and performing non-critical activities such as pressure washing or filling pools.

We realize the significance of this request and appreciate your support for this drastic measure because the medical industry needs to be the priority user of liquid oxygen to treat patients.

We also ask that you please be prepared to continue water conservation measures over the next few weeks.

Should you need additional information and water conservation tips, please visit OUC.com/waterinfo.

Sincerely, OUC—The Reliable One

This was NOT a problem we had to contend with last year during the initial COVID infection. Mask mandates were enforced as was social distancing. We got through that period, enough that I was ecstatic to get my dual Moderna vaccination (as was my wife). I honestly thought we were going to beat it this year, until it because too obvious that the conservative/Republican side decided that not only was common sense mask wearing to onerous, but so was getting the vaccine.

It is enough that the willingly unvaccinated are disease vectors for the delta variant of the corona virus. It gets worse that we have to put them up in our hospitals, taking all the beds in our ICUs and forcing the hospital staff to once again go well beyond the call of duty to care for these ignorant and selfish bastards.

But to get an email telling us to limit water usage because oxygen, normally used to treat our water, must be diverted to help treat intubated patients who refused free vaccines that would have stopped the worst of COVID from afflicting them, is for me the last straw.

I already have cut back watering my lawn because I've always recognized the incredible waste of such an action, so it's not like I have to adjust in that area. But to have to read this and realize why, is more than I can put up with.

As the saying goes, you can't fix stupid. But I hope after all of this is passed that a good bit of stupid has died off.