It was not really until David Hume, writing during the Scottish Enlightenment, that an attempt was made to reconcile Scepticism with the real world. Frustrated at the “insipid raillery” of those who claimed mankind could know nothing, he dismissed their obscure thought experiments as “mere Philosophical Amusement”, and instead chose to reclaim Scepticism as a critical mindset. To put it simply, for Hume it was important to be “a philosopher; but, amidst all of your philosophy, be still a man”.

At the end of last year, Edinburgh University renamed its David Hume Tower because the philosopher — at least according to those who demanded the change — “wrote racist epithets”. Whether or not that is true is an argument for another day. But this erasure of Hume – the Enlightenment philosopher who reclaimed the meaning of scepticism more than 200 years ago – is symbolic of something far more significant. For it seems to me that the term “sceptic,” and the attitude it represents, is once again in urgent need of rehabilitation.

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On paper, that shouldn’t be too difficult. As Hume put in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, to be sceptical is “to begin with clear and self-evident principles, to advance by timorous and sure steps, to review frequently our conclusions, and examine accurately all their consequences”. At the time, this was radical. It encompassed everything progressive about the Enlightenment and the emergence of the scientific method. But it also seems eminently sensible. Who wouldn’t want to be a sceptic today?

Apparently, quite a lot of people. Scepticism is suddenly perilously out of fashion. More than that, it is now deemed dangerous. The reason? The rise of the “lockdown sceptics”, who in recent weeks have taken a battering for having made claims about the virus that turned out not to be true.

In a sense, this is what should happen in the scientific method — commentators and experts being held to account for predictions they make. But the ferocity of the attacks has left us at a place where all questioning groups are subjected to the same moral condemnation. Whether they are pundits peddling conspiracies, credentialed scientists recommending alternative approaches, or intellectuals worried about the political implications — “Lockdown sceptics” is used interchangeably for them all. Any dissent will mark you out as part of the global “anti-science” movement. So sceptic has become a dirty word.

In our own LockdownTV interview series, which kicked off early in the pandemic, we put the scientific method into action. We featured eminent scientists from all sides of the debate sharing their views: advocates for a stronger response such as Profs Neil Ferguson, Nathalie Dean, Devi Sridhar and Fredrik Elgh put forward their arguments alongside advocates of a more liberal approach such as Johan Giesecke, Anders Tegnell and the Great Barrington scientists. As you might expect, some statements aged better than others; some voices became more credible and others fell away, but it was all conducted in a spirit of civility and respectful enquiry.

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When Nobel prize-winner Michael Levitt’s prediction that the American epidemic would end in August failed to materialise, we had him back on the show to account for himself. Both Giesecke and Tegnell have also pledged to return to discuss their learnings later this year.

But the treatment of some of these scientists is troubling. Oxford Professor Sunetra Gupta is now bracketed with out-and-out cranks by MPs and columnists in national newspapers. I know her to be a kind, intelligent and accomplished person who cares deeply about saving lives. Perhaps she shouldn’t have speculated so specifically about the Infection Fatality Rate in her UnHerd interview so early in the pandemic; perhaps she should have caveated her theory that the epidemic was “on the way out” with the likelihood that it could come back again in the winter.

But she was a scientist giving her interpretation of the data at the time, not a trained politician stiffly parsing every word. The attacks on her fellow signatories of the “Great Barrington Declaration” by academic colleagues at Harvard and Stanford, as well as the “blood on their hands” rhetoric they regularly receive in the British press, sets a disturbing precedent for the next scientific controversy. Who would be a dissenting scientist now?

Creative thinking should be encouraged, not penalised. If new variants or developments extend this lockdown period beyond the spring, a more differentiated approach closer to the one the GBD posited — offering better protection to the vulnerable and letting others get on with their lives — may yet become relevant. At the briefing Boris Johnson received from Gupta, Carl Heneghan and Anders Tegnell, he rejected their proposals and continued with a lockdown strategy regardless — fair enough. But the Prime Minister should surely be praised rather than condemned for wanting to test and retest his assumptions?

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At the level of government policy, the effect of the pandemic on attitudes should also give us pause. In the relentless comparison of different countries’ outcomes, the recipe for success on Covid-19 policy appears to be something like: presume new risks are worst-case scenarios and act immediately, and dramatically, rather than waiting for more evidence. Countries which acted in the opposite way to David Hume’s “timorous and sure steps” and swiftly imposed border controls and restrictions have generally had the best Covid-19 outcomes; “dithering” Western nations are unfavourably compared to their more commanding Asian counterparts. But while this may have been effective in the context of the pandemic, as a general lesson for government it would represent a terrifying new direction.

Many people might feel that we are in a wartime situation with this virus, and that something closer to martial law is therefore appropriate for this exceptional period. But as human rights lawyer Adam Wagner made clear in yesterday’s UnHerd interview, if history is any guide, emergency measures have a way of becoming permanent — most of the powers taken by the government during 9/11 are still there. We have now been governed in a “Napoleonic” style for almost a year, with new updates coming by ministerial decree on average every four and a half days and with very little oversight. Can anyone confidently say that none of that attitude will stick?

When it comes to the inevitable next virus or pathogen to be identified somewhere around the world, the playbook has surely now been written. As Wagner told me, “the danger is that if Covid never leaves us, or it mutates or a different virus arrives with a similar dynamic we’ll be in a semi-permanent state of “this is what we do” — when this happens, we have lockdowns, we have emergency laws, we take away parliamentary niceties like scrutiny, debates, votes, that sort of thing… And I think that is a danger that doesn’t come out of the fringes of the lockdown sceptic movement. That’s the real deal as a worry.”

At times of crisis, scepticism can be unnerving and the temptation to try to silence dissenting voices is understandable. But which is the bigger danger? That people are allowed to question the orthodoxy and potentially get things wrong but are held accountable in an open debate? Or that sceptical voices are censored for  “misinformation”, and no one dares dissent? Everyone loses when doubt becomes a vice once more.

In order to achieve these goals, however, Prof Sridhar’s suggested strategy is the opposite of Sweden’s more laissez-faire approach. Instead of being more permissive, she is calling for governments to follow the Scottish lead and commit to a “ZeroCovid” strategy — ie that any level of Covid-19, no matter how low, is considered unacceptable, and that within national borders, governments should aim to eliminate the virus completely. Liberty, achieved through greater suppression, is the paradoxical idea.

If you want a preview of the next phase of the political debate around Covid-19, this is it. Nicola Sturgeon (who Professor Sridhar advises) is calling for England to join the other home nations in committing to a ZeroCovid strategy, the so-called “Independent Sage” group of scientists is in agreement, and the Liberal Democrat Layla Moran has begun to demand that Boris Johnson takes the pledge. The group has a distinctly Left-progressive-idealist flavour, perhaps unsurprising given that the policy is driven by a conviction that, with enough willpower, governments and collective action can remake the world.

The key argument is as follows. “Health versus the economy” was never the right framing — the countries that have fared best so far in this pandemic, whose economies and societies are returning to normal fastest, are the ones that acted to lock down decisively and early, drove the virus down to very low levels, and are employing massive testing and track and trace programmes to keep it there.

If you try to open up society while the disease is still in circulation it will firstly not work because people are still feeling afraid (Prof Sridhar points to the mostly empty cinemas and theatres since they reopened) and, what’s more, the virus will come back. She gives Spain as an example of a country that had driven the virus to low levels but, since opening to tourists and restarting the “night-time economy” of bars and clubs, has seen a large surge in case numbers. In her view, they should have controlled the border more aggressively, been more activist in testing, tracing and isolating, and kept things like nightclubs closed.

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When I pressed her on what exactly would be different from today in a ZeroCovid-committed England, the impression is of “do more of the same, but do it better and try harder”. More testing (up to 1 million a day), replace 14-day quarantine with testing twice at the border, and improve the NHS Test and Trace programme. Partly, she feels that change would already come from making the commitment, as it would give citizens clarity as to the national strategy. One striking detail was the idea of making ZeroCovid zones within the country, ringfenced with limited movement in or out, that could link up until the whole country was rid of the disease. (I wouldn’t want to be the one to inform the inhabitants of a town that they couldn’t leave because it had become Covid-free!)

I asked her about the dramatic improvements to mortality rates that we are seeing in these apparent “second waves” across Europe. She acknowledged the trend and thinks it is down to spread among the younger population and improvements to treatment, but says that she has not yet seen convincing proof of either widespread T Cell immunity or mutations towards a milder strain. I asked whether, if the virus becomes provably less severe, it would reach a point where she would abandon the ZeroCovid idea altogether:

“Of course. We have to change our strategies based on the evolving nature of this virus and that’s why my mind has changed over the course of watching this virus. What worries me is the health impact — not only on the deaths but the disability for younger people. I’m concerned about the long-haulers. If a new strain emerged that was more infectious but less severe like the common cold — well then that would be fantastic and I would not be saying we have to push for zero Covid.”

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She’s keen to emphasise that, despite the name, the policy is not a plan to live in perpetual lockdown until the last human being is cured of Covid-19. She describes herself as “anti-lockdown” and that “CovidZero is not about keeping restrictions forever — you don’t want to destroy a society chasing down the last person who has the virus. It’s actually saying that we are going to continue seeing spikes and mitigating the economic effects… It’s about mass testing, good tracing and getting life back…”

So what about a disease-like flu, which according to some estimates is already killing more people per week in England than Covid-19? Should we have a zero-flu policy, with mass testing, local lockdowns and a test and trace system?

“Covid is nothing like the flu,” Prof Sridhar says. “Flu is a respiratory disease, whereas Covid is a multi-system disease. You have young people a few weeks after catching Covid having heart attacks, which does not happen with the flu, along with kidney failure, blood clots and pulmonary embolisms. There is something different about this virus — it is nothing like the flu.”

Opponents will say that the ZeroCovid goal ends up being fanatical, potentially consigning us to years of life-altering restrictions in pursuit of a goal we will never achieve, in response to a threat that doesn’t warrant it in the first place. Yesterday’s announcement by New Zealand that Covid-19 sufferers will be removed to a quarantine facility and Scotland’s drive to require masks in schools will only add to their concerns. But Professor Sridhar clearly believes that concerted activism and short-term pain is a more responsible route back to life as normal — she makes an eloquent case and our thanks to her for such a stimulating discussion.