I think the reason I found the Finlayson piece so offensive is that it was an accusation of a lack of moral courage. It ignored the very commonplace, very explicit moral obligation that people felt and spoke about: we *should* keep to the lockdown because it is the right thing...

And instead made a massive jump that people complied *against* their conscience or in its absence, and therefore the compliance was an act of moral cowardice or some kind of unthinking herd behaviour.

This is a self-serving cherry-picking heap of fallacies designed to aggrandise "dissenters" as the morally courageous heroes.

It's not that dissenters were acting in bad faith - some had good points, and even some of those with bad points had good intentions. But Finlayson's presumption that they were the *only* ones acting in good faith, with moral intent? That is wildly bad faith.

But also: "we used to be a nation that would stand up against killing other people for imperial interest but now we are willing to stay home to prevent disease spread look how far we've fallen" is just the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard.