The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

— Excerpt, The Plague by Albert Camus p. 120

Not last night, but the night before on Monday, I struggled to fall asleep.  I made the mistake of checking my cell phone news feed before turning in.  I read a statement coming from the President that he wanted to open the economy by mid-April, Easter.  He reasoned that an economy like ours was not built for shutting down.  As I read those words a stab of pure fear coursed through my body.  I knew that the president calculated that giving the all-clear signal at a predetermined time was a reasonable exchange for an unknowable number of fatalities that otherwise would be avoided.  With additional comments he readily admitted that his point of view was contrary to that of the medical Doctors.

Eventually, somehow, sleep came.  The needs of the body prevailed over a troubled mind.  The next day, yesterday,  riding my bicycle along the path southward, a four mile stretch to North Aurora afforded more time to consider our situation as Americans.  Ignorance is the central issue.  We were largely ignorant of the covid-19 virus, until it arrived here.  Now we know from our initial first hand experience just how devastating it is to become sick with this organism.  Like a lamprey it bores into normal cells using them for reproductive ends, reproducing more virus exponentially within the body.  This is no severe case of the flu.  It is disabling for a longer term if it does not kill, unless treated promptly.

There is a single method to turn back the spread of the virus.  Don’t get sick, and don’t spread the contagion.  That demands an undetermined time span of social distancing, — until the virus spread is slowed, and the sick can be treated to recovery so they do not continue to spread the sickness.  That’s the formula in a nutshell as I understand it.

While resting at the midpoint of my bike ride, I moved close to take a photograph of the dam on the Fox River at North Aurora.  The water created a pulsing, unending roar.  I was close enough to be dampened by spray when the breeze shifted.  One hundred and eighty degrees behind me the river flowed placidly, under the arches of the bridge, pacific, serene.

Both viewpoints are of Nature, incontestably true, no matter how you feel, or what you desire to think about the matter.  The covid-19 virus is like the roaring cascade of water over the dam.  Impassive of what the president desires, it will continue to advance.

Two plus two is four.  2+2=4

The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four.

……..The essential thing was to save the greatest possible number of persons from dying and being doomed to unending separation. And to do this there was only one resource: to fight the plague. There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.

Excerpt, The Plague by Albert Camus  p. 122