Six years on: lockdown revisited as a psychological experiment

Six years after the lockdown, the question remains open

The tweet that opens the conversation offers no data, just an image and a sentence: a moment that, according to its author, went down in the country's history. From there, rereading the years of the little bug becomes a settling of scores with the official narrative. The dominant thesis is that it was not just a health crisis, but a psychological experiment on a grand scale. And it is not a fringe idea: it runs through almost every message.

What is being questioned about lockdowns and masks

The criticism is spread across several fronts. The first is obedience: the claim is that confinement and masks were accepted with an enthusiasm that unsettles, and that those who pointed out the excesses were treated as suspects. The second aims higher, at the pharmaceutical industry, which is said to hold power over the media and part of the scientific community. The third is selective memory: some claim that much of the visual and journalistic material from those months has disappeared from the internet.

One figure is repeated as the central argument: 94% of the population went along with it. It is the estimate used in the conversation to measure the level of acceptance of the measures. It is not official data, but a figure that circulates and is used to diagnose Spanish society. From there, the jump to an uncomfortable conclusion: if that percentage is real, the problem was not the government, it was the crowd.

Mask rows and neighbours informing on each other

The most physical memory is that of the street. Arguments and near-fights over not wearing a mask are described, with people who felt entitled to berate anyone going without one. The scene repeats itself: bravery from a distance and silence on the ground. Alongside that, the informing: calls to the police for going out for a walk. For those telling it, that was a trial by fire that revealed what their neighbours were made of.

The other axis is the vaccine. The safe and effective slogan is questioned, side effects said to be normalised are mentioned, and a media apparatus that allowed no questions. Against that, personal experience: getting through the bicho at home and coming out fine without a vaccine. The conclusion drawn is that natural immunity was dismissed in favour of an industrial solution.

Forgetting as a strategy and the price of remembering

The tone turns harsher when memory comes up. The banishment of groups and conversations for recalling those two years is described. The explanation given is psychological: nobody can bear having been deceived, so the episode is erased. The video that opens the conversation is celebrated as a relic, precisely because it is taken for granted that this past no longer exists in search engines.

The discussion never reaches agreement on what it all was. For some it was a rehearsal of social control; for others, simply a well-managed exercise in collective antiestéticar. What almost everyone shares is suspicion of the narrative built at the time. And a warning: if the 94% go along with it again next time, the experiment will have worked twice.