My anxiety is spiking again. The idea of even quite draconian restrictions to normal life, imposed for a limited time, does not faze me. But so many people are clamouring for an open-ended lockdown that I feel nauseous with fear at the enthusiasm for the destruction of so much

that is valuable about our lives. I'm hearing people say "ah well, it will only be until the end of 2020/the end of 2021/Christmas 2022/until we have a vaccine. The end dates are retreating further & further into the future.

The pandemic has already given me the feeling that things can change at breakneck speed, things we took for granted can be whipped out from under us at a moment's notice. And we do not know when & if they can be replaced.

If we have to give up so much—the chance to hug friends & family; to walk freely in nature; to find love & romance; to pet dogs; to see the people we care about—it must be temporary. It can't be an indefinite impoverishment.

Fresh air, movement, warm human contact: these things can't be replaced by "watching telly" as one person put it repeatedly (I've blocked). These are not frivolous, optional extras. These are the things that make life worth living. We suddenly seem so eager to discard them.

This is what makes me anxious: the pace at which every old certainty is undermined. First, we needed social distancing; then that rapidly became self-isolation; now I'm hearing calls for everyone to be kept indoors 24/7.

First, it was a few weeks that this would be necessary. Then a few months. Now the most frequent projection seems to be the rest of this year. Suddenly some are asking that the restrictions remain in place indefinitely.

Everything is snowballing in a way that makes me dizzy. And we do not seem to even want to acknowledge that what we are asking of people is not to relinquish frivolous pleasures, but to ignore needs that go to the heart of what it means to be human.

There's a scene in Alan Garner's book "The Weirdstone of Birsinghamen," which I loved as a child, in which the protagonists have to take a lungful of air & dive into a flooded underground tunnel, not knowing if or where the water will clear & the tunnel emerge into daylight.

I feel as though we have just collectively dived into that tunnel.