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For those few of us who have been consistently against lockdowns in their many forms since the first was decreed more than nine months ago, the prevailing feeling now is numbness. That worst

enemy, torpor, starts to fall over all aspects of the announcements from government, the latest grim reckoning possessing all the surprise and originality of a small puddle in the street.

Enervation starts to set in every time we are assured of a way out, or are told that the sacrifices made by the public are for our own good and that of society. And, worst of all, there is

the creeping suspicion that we should just give in and let the Devil, in this case Johnson and his coterie, take it as they will. Yet if this new period of subjugation can make me say

anything new, it’s that continuing to offer up another voice is more important than ever. It is to the infinite credit of publications such as the _TheArticle_ that some writers have been

able to decry the notion that the last twelve months have all been for our own good.  A quick swipe through the opinion pages of most major newspapers originally presented lockdown

“scepticism” as some kind of niche hobby, which was first seen as being merely quirky when the restrictions were first put in place, and is now derided as directly responsible for most of

the deaths which the government continually remind us of above all else. To oppose the lockdown is now to have blood on one’s hands and to be the ideological culprit who could supposedly not

bear to skip a heartbeat over the deaths of thousands of people in this country. We wanted to fuel a “culture war” with supposed experts as the ultimate enemy, which some managed to

construe to positions on Brexit. It doesn’t help, of course, that much of the media antagonism towards lockdown comes from notoriously “against the tide” writers such as Toby Young, and the

endlessly odious Nigel Farage, and therefore the sinister game of guilt by association can claim its first victims. While Piers Corbyn screams his rabid conspiracies, anyone who doubts the

efficacy of our shutdown is placed on the same moral footing; anyone who voices this voice in public is like the saying about Lord Byron: “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”. Well, this latest

lockdown won’t help matters. I’ve written before about the impacts of lockdowns on education; my GCSEs looked set to follow the previous year, into the magic spinner of Gavin Williamson’s

Department for Education to see what comes out at the end. It’s an uncertain fate which welcomes hundreds of thousands of other students who were assured that they would be able to face

normal exams in the summer. So, another year will go by in which children, who have almost zero risk from the disease, have their education thrown into jeopardy for the concerns of their

much older relatives. To tell pupils that their futures are a necessary sacrifice requires some humility from government. Yet I fear none will come for those children whose depressions,

anxieties and crushed ambitions will never make the front pages of a newspaper or have their faces on the “next slide”. I don’t believe there will be much humility from government over the

next few months. We face yet another period of morose faces of the bureaucrats who have clouded our screens throughout, as they forecast our unending doom, without questioning the overall

wisdom of their strategy. Another period of crushing isolation, while being told, once again, that it’ll all be over if we just push through together. But “togetherness” does not stop at our

behaviour and compliance – it must surely be extended to what we think. The rebuke, if you suggest that lives might actually be saved by avoiding lockdowns or that people should be free to

take their own liberties as they see fit, is that such views are not just wrong, but dangerous, and should not be aired in polite society. “The science”, that bland generalisation, dismisses

all dissent. For it is the same Oxford, which has produced the vaccine now being rolled out, that is also home to scientists such as Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan. Can they be dismissed

as blood-curdling conspiracists with no thoughts for the vulnerable? No, despite them being two examples of experts who have expressed their sceptical views throughout. The anguish which I

feel now is for the lives that will be lost as a result of lockdown. They won’t be read out every night in the news or projected onto our screen as rationale for new measures – they will be

slow and silent. They will be people who have had their lives shortened by missed treatments, their incomes taken away, or their emotional lives shattered by measures over which they have no

control, never voted for, and are told are to save indeterminate others. The idea that lockdowns are an immediate fix which reduce death, still persuades most people. Yet even as we go into

a third shutdown in less than a year, deaths and cases are still comparably high. Boris Johnson knows that he can get away with these plans because of the hope which a vaccine brings, but

he can still offer no exit clause to his measures. Does the Government still cling to its hallucinatory belief that only when the virus is eliminated from society can we return to some

semblance of normality? If so, it is perfectly prepared, and is intent on performing, the unleashing of torpor, stagnation and irreparable loss on this battered nation. I would urge you to

think for yourself on our perilous times and decide whether our rulers can tell us with such gumption not only what to do, but how to think. You may well disagree fervently, but I trust you

won’t call me a killer. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more

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