THE PANDEMIC YOU REMEMBER DIDN’T HAPPEN The memory of COVID has settled into a nice little morality play: a terrifying pandemic arrived, science rose to fight it, governments reluctantly did what science required, and millions of responsible people banded together — while a bunch of selfish assholes refused to bend the knee and made everything worse. That isn’t what happened. What happened was a worldwide mass hysteria. The PERCEPTION of the pandemic changed with astonishing speed, and frightened populations began demanding that governments DO SOMETHING. People forget that governments themselves initially pushed for calm. In the U.S., as late as February 29, Trump was asking the media not to incite panic; Health Secretary Alex Azar emphasized that the vast majority of infected people would have mild-to-moderate illness; and Fauci stressed that serious illness was concentrated heavily among older people and those with underlying conditions. Britain was still saying much the same IN MARCH. On March 3, Boris Johnson said the overwhelming majority would have mild disease and told people to go about their business as usual. On March 5, SAGE said there was no evidence that banning very large gatherings would reduce transmission. As late as March 12, the government was still saying that banning major events would have little effect and that closing schools at that point could do more harm than good. Then the switch flipped. What followed wasn’t simply authoritarianism imposed from above. Much of it was demanded and enforced FROM BELOW. People begged governments, employers, schools, restaurants, airlines, doctors, social-media companies — and one another — to impose restrictions. They reported neighbors. Shamed strangers. Demanded people be fired. Wanted the unvaccinated confined. Invented rituals that weren’t even required. Institutions competed to show that they were taking COVID more seriously than the institution next door. And perhaps strangest of all, CIVIL LIBERTIES SUDDENLY BECAME OPTIONAL. Freedom of movement, association, assembly, speech, bodily autonomy, informed consent — protections supposedly designed precisely for moments when governments and majorities are frightened — were suddenly treated as ordinary policy variables to be balanced away. Fauci captured the mood when challenged about restrictions: “I don’t look at this as a liberty thing.” COVID true believers routinely mocked anti-lockdowners for wanting “FREEDUMB.” Freedom itself became the punchline. Almost overnight, asking whether government had the RIGHT to do these things sounded quaint. The question became simply: might it help? It was totalitarianism in a peculiar form: AUTHORITARIANISM IMPLEMENTED BOTTOM-UP. So if your memory is still “science fought a deadly virus while the bad people refused to bend the knee to the new religion that sprang up in mid-March 2020,” here’s a reminder of just how fucking irrational we became: 🧵