quarantine
Quarantine is the grandest farewell ceremony a state conducts to hide unknown pathogens from the world. While posing as guardian of health, it wields the simplistic logic of "isolation means safety" as a blade that carves fear into society. By parading numbers of beds and tests, it stages safety and replaces genuine concern with a hollow sense of reassurance. At times it locks citizens into a transparent cage, performing the paradox of freedom versus security. In the end, the only void left is the space it creates for human thought to atrophy.