People on here will be familiar with the frustration of trying to argue with bed-wetters about lockdowns. It doesn't matter how many points you make about Professor Ferguson being a certified quack, PHE's death statistics being spuriously fabricated or the success of Sweden's laissez-faire approach, the tragedy of not being able to see elderly relatives in their final days, the injustice of denying children an education and the imminent economic disaster: there are still people who believe in the religion of lockdowns. I can only put their errant ways down to the fact that they have not grasped the relationship between quality of life and value of life, and if that is true then no amount of facts, figures and statistics are going to be able to convince them of the evils of lockdowns. It will be like arguing with a brick wall. To address this, I have attempted to get to the root of the problem and set out an ultimate, definitive argument for why lockdowns are bad, an argument which cannot rationally be contested.
If any of your friends are family are bed-wetting lockdown lovers, I would be genuinely interested to know how they react to the following treatise. It begins: I have been in opposition to the lockdown, and all measures pertaining to it, since March when they were first mooted. My opposition was immediate and founded on my understanding of the inherent wrongness of totalitarianism and the premise, which to me is irrefutable, that quality of life is directly proportional to the value of life. To elaborate, eliminating quality of life eliminates the value of life, and if life has no value there is no sense in bothering to preserve it.
The truth of this matter might be observed through human interactions with the animal kingdom, in which people cherish the lives of intelligent animals, which includes many mammals and birds, but do not care if they squash a fly or a spider. While it is true that some animals are valued simply for a cute outward appearance, bonds between humans and animals only occur with the more intelligent species, which are not necessarily always the cutest. The intelligent species that act as working animals or as companions enjoy, up to a point, quality of life in the sense that they experience emotions and exhibit traits in common with humans. For example, a horse may be hard-working, a dog may be loyal, a cat may be curious, and all such animals experience happiness and sadness. Because of this, we place an emotional value on their lives. On the other hand, a fly will never have the benefit of any such traits or feelings. Accordingly, the death of a fly does not bother anyone.
There is also parallel case to be made within humanity. For example, a person who exists in a vegetative