The Greatest Good

As the virus spreads...around the globe and through the spaces in between: from noses and sneezes, mouths and coughs, and hands that shake, as they have for a long time, to indicate and show, that I trust you, believe in you, enough to shake your hand, I sit at my dining room table and look out the window at a spring set to settle, a warming of both heart and soul from a winter in which it began. It began. And things changed. Things like the distance between you and me. Things like gatherings of thousands to revel in athletic feats but also gatherings to learn; classrooms to throw ideas around and push the boundaries of what we “know.” Changed. Restrictions on freedom, for a greater good. We all recognized the greater good. Sacrificed immediately, without a second thought. Not one misgiving. The greater good was obvious. Stop the spread. It can’t spread if we’re not together. Part. So part we shall. For the greater good. How far and how long are not questions we shall ask; not when the greater good is at stake. Science will tell us. We’ll (the royal species) study this virus and learn its ways and model it and get inside it and think like it and solve the riddle of it. So we can get back together. We will. And science will be the tool we use. The tool. Faith will not be the tool we use. To stop the spread of the virus. Faith will not get us back together. Faith will not stop it in its tracks. It can’t be contained with faith. Faith is about the unseen and the unknowable but we need to see it and we need to know it.
It spread so fast. In real time. The bubbles on the maps popped and popped, like cola too high at the top of the glass. Exponential. One became two and two became four and four sixteen...because we foolishly spent time together. Even though ill. Even though sick. Even with symptoms, we ventured out and among...people. What kind of virus forces us apart? What kind of plague makes us realize we get together so much? What kind of insidious spell is cast to drive and force us from one another? Cruel and unusual. This is no time to think of solitary confinement. No time at all. This is quarantine for a greater good. This is no time to question if solitary confinement is cruel and unusual. There is a time and a place for everything and now is not the time and this is not the place. We (the royal species) have to stop the spread. When the spread is contained and the virus mitigated and eradicated, as it will be, then we can address concerns like solitary confinement.
Will you address if it is cruel and unusual? Will you use your beloved science to get inside of solitary confinement, learn its ways, model it, think like it, to solve the riddle of solitary confinement? 

Here’s one for ya: what did the prisoner say to the warden after his stint in solitary confinement? 

Trick question. The prisoner had lost his humanity so said nothing. 

Can humanity be regained once lost? Can the virus be eradicated? Truly eradicated or does it just go dormant, like the humanity of a prisoner in solitary? 

There’s talk of people breaking the rules: still gathering, getting together, being societal. There’s talk that virtual isn’t enough; that people needed to touch. That they just needed to be in the same room, to see eyes and be seen with eyes without a screen. There’s talk. They even talked about the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks and how he talked to the volleyball - Wilson. There’s talk that solitary, now more than ever, may be cruel and unusual, worse, ineffective. There’s talk, in some circles, like corrections circles, that solitary makes for better prisoners—easier to control. Then some talked about the ultimate goal of corrections but it got convoluted when others talked about justice. Plato talked about justice. Retribution is talked about in the bible. An eye for an eye. Some talk like retribution and justice are the same. Talk is cheap, they say.
But the virus, made talk really valuable. Made people want to hear from one another, made them remember the lush satisfaction from gabbing, about things like even the weather, even the virus and the status of things. They talked for hours, forgot about the television and the scores and really got in there and got inside conversations and learned so much about people. People they thought they knew, parents, brothers and sisters, became new and novel and strange with so much talk. “You did what?” Cheap talk came to be cherished. The virus worked in mysterious ways. They talked about people they lost...to the virus. They talked about their prognostications and the future of the species. There was so much talk of the economy and capitalism was talked about in a whole new way. But there’s a time and a place for everything and some felt this wasn’t the time nor the place to talk about capitalism. Some said capitalism makes better consumers—easier to control. Some said capitalism will get us out of this. Some said epidemiology will. Some said they’re the same. Some said that was bullshit. They talked through it. They got together. Against the greater good some said. Some said getting together was the greatest good.