Thread by @DanielHadas2

I admire those who, from the start, rejected and resisted every aspect of the Covid regime.

But I cannot claim to be one of them. At its inception, I supported the spring 2020 UK lockdown.

Hindsight distorts, but still, I shall try to recall some reasons for my support.

Fear -

I understood that, while it was unlikely someone like me would die from Covid, I could indeed still die. I was afraid to die. The idea of staying home, safe and cosseted, was reasurring.

Horror -

Images and tales of the dead and dying were everywhere, and I was willing to accept that only lockdowns could stop the ushering in of a long, dark season of death and despair.

Trust in experts and authorities -

I couldn't bring myself to believe that so radical a project would be nigh-universally embraced by those with the relevant knowledge and responsibilities, unless it were genuinely the best option.

Team loyalty -

I was vaguely on the left, tiresomely anti-Brexit, disgusted by Donald Trump, disdainful of libertarians. So the few prominent voices against lockdown were not on my team.

The lockdown project was 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 -

It was thrilling to live through, and participate in, this entirely new experiment. In particular, it was thrilling to be using technology to do the seemingly impossible: keep work and socialisation going without leaving one's house.

And the lockdown project also seemed 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦 - this new experiment was an experiment in kindness. We were all refraining from pleasure and company for the greater good of saving lives.

Now, for me, none of the above came without questions, and, through guidance from family and friends, through copious reading, through my own mounting sense of numbness and suffocation, I gradually came to reject the entire project of the war on Covid.

I am of course glad & grateful that this happened.

But I'm also troubled to see, looking back, how unable I (like millions of others) was to simply make & stick to the obvious objection that it is wrong to lock people in their homes. Not regrettable, or high-risk. Simply wrong.

I was offered the chance to participate in a science experiment where nothing was taboo. And in itself that seemed to me an offer I could reasonably accept, a project that might be necessary and even thrilling.

Leaving aside whatever personal blindness or failings motivated me, I think one reason for this acceptance was that science experiments where nothing is taboo are, for industrial modernity, a normal way to live.

Indeed what has industrial modernity itself been, if not a centuries-long science experiment in which all much participate, and in which taboo after taboo has been razed to the ground and ploughed with salt?