The futility of trying to engage with the Covid do-gooders: a personal story
Preface: I have been plunged into severe depression by lockdowns, complete with suicide attempts. If you object “Oh but you might have had depression anyway mental illness is complex we’ll never know”, I reply “Oh but 99% of Covid-19 victims might have died during the past year anyway co-morbidities are complex we’ll never know”. See, I can play the game too.
In some of the darkest moments, I thought: the suffering is unbearable, yet I am one of the privileged ones, with a home, a non-abusive family environment, a salary. God know how much bad it must be for those less privileged than me. Surely decision-makers and scientists advocating for harsh measures know the figures, they must be aware of the damage they are causing with their policies, but perhaps they do not know its full extent, perhaps they just look at us as figures, perhaps — they are human after all — they have been sidetracked by the “human interest” angle of the Covid-19 stories in the press but they have not paused to think that the stories of the other side (unemployment, mental health, abuse, despair) have a “human interest” angle as well.
So, in my naiveté, I thought: maybe I can do something to show them the extent of what they are doing. Maybe if I do it, and someone else does it, and enough people do it, they won’t simply regard us as numbers in a model, and their policies will be more balanced, more compassionate.
So I told my story. Without giving too much detail, but without sugar-coating either. It wasn’t just about me: I treated my story as just one more example of the myriad societal problems lockdowns are causing (one more example, and not a particularly tragic one, just one more), and made sure to include links to studies and reports on such problems. In some of my letters (as time went by, as I became more desperate), I tried moral arguments as well. You are trying to save lives: all well and good. However, how legitimate is it to harm others to save lives? Especially if the others do not consent? How is this not triage by another name? (there’ll be a post on triage in this blog, at some point)
Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking. I have already say: I was (am) naive. I was (am) desperate.
The replies from elected representatives and institutions were the most predictable. We acknowledge that this is a difficult time for everybody, but. Saving lives bla bla (the most well-read among them cited that joke of a study by Flaxman proving that lockdowns! work!). We’re working hard bla bla. Oh here’s this website that we’ve set up if you’re struggling with mental health (a website basically telling you to suck it up and if things get really bad then do some of that superstitious, science-free ritual called “mindfulness”. This from institutions and elected representatives claiming to “follow the science”, lol).
On the occasions that I tried the moral arguments, there was absolutely zero engagement with them. But: they are bureaucrats; they have precisely zero understanding of moral arguments. What counts in their worldview is to “do” something, to justify their own existence by adopting the role of omnipotent moral busibodies. I could as well be speaking in ancient Greek to them while they were speaking in Thai: it’s just a complete lack of a common language that could eventually allow us to even agree to disagree.
The replies from scientists and the public health influencer crowd were more interesting, although ultimately predictable too I suppose. I have particular fondness for those who tried to convince me that the fault was of course with the evil Tory government who didn’t pay attention to the scientists early on and then was “forced” to lockdown. So let me get this straight: we should have done a lockdown to avoid a lockdown. Yes, this is the quality of reasoning these days. Other than that, the arguments quite resembled those of the bureaucrats, minus the omnipotent moral busibody tone but plus a lot of the rhetoric about being “kind” and “caring” (honestly, I think these people must have Zoom calls where they congratulate each other for being so kind and caring). I’ll be rooting for you, wrote one of these individuals in what I consider to be a particularly low point in these exchanges. (No, I don’t expect you to care for me, a person you have never met. But at the same time you could do me the courtesy of not treating me like a horrible person for not wanting to have my mental health wrecked for the sake of some elderly person somewhere who might die if I go for a coffee one day).
By drafting these replies to me, I imagine that the kindness gang, and possibly with some of the bureaucratic gang, were thinking that they were doing a good deed. Ok, we have this person here who is clearly upset, who is even a bit deranged. Me thinks that she doth protest too much, but not going out for months kind of sucks and we have to show that we are kind anyway, so let us explain things to her, because she does sound a bit thick. Clearly she missed the memo that lockdowns! save! lives!, so let’s explain that to her, slowly and patiently, so that she can understand.
Problem is, I didn’t taking it. Yes, here I show that I am indeed a bit deranged (I am, I have a mental health diagnosis). On some occasions, but not all, I wrote back. I wrote back to say: this is all very good but: can you precisely explain on what moral authority you think it’s okay to harm someone to save someone else? And this is not an abstract debate to which you can say “well we don’t know the precise effects of lockdown anyway” (HA) or “people are actually happier under lockdowns!”: I am telling you, lockdowns have harmed me.
In about half of the cases there was no reply, which I can understand: why would you engage with some deranged people online. In others, there was a second e-mail basically repeating the arguments of the first. Again: me talking in ancient Greek, them replying in Thai.
What this taught me: the lockdown side are by now prepared to admit that lockdowns cause harm (yes there’s the “lockdowns make people happier” camp, they do exist although they are a minority; I’ll talk about them at some point). It’s a tradeoff, they say. But the tradeoff can only be solved in one way: by locking down and sacrificing everything and everyone to the NHS so that they don’t become “overwhelmed” (again, I’ll write about this at some point too). Crucial for the resolution of the tradeoff is that those of us who have been quite simply thrown under the bus graciously accept the sacrifice. Yes I have suffered. Yes it sucks. Yes but it was necessary. Yes I am happy to have contributed to save lives. At most you are allowed to rage against the government for not having “acted earlier” (i.e. lockdown sooner, longer, harder).
Problem is, sacrifice has to be, by definition, voluntary. When it is forced or coerced it’s not sacrifice, it’s something else. This is the bit that we are not supposed to draw attention to. To the lockdown side, that a lockdown victim doesn’t graciously accept her fate and instead says, “hey, you threw me under the bus and you didn’t have any right to do so”, is worse than inconceivable.
