"But yes the ease, the complacency with which people, ultimately, do and think as they are told by 'authority', and quite casually give up basic liberties, put together, I find chilling."
-But that's not the case: The government had to be pushed reluctantly into this one: essentially by public opinion. I recall seeing an interesting graph of restaurant bookings from the period.They had actually virtually stopped completely quite a few days before Boris ever made his lockdown announcement. So when you say: "when told we're faced with a plague, uttered in the language of positive science but without imv the basis - evident on these pages - ultimately an unconscious argument to authority."
I would reply that people weren't bowing to authority in either sense.They were aware that the politicians were saying one thing:that its not a big deal... and the medical people were saying another: there's a lot of people getting ill and dying...so they took a provisional precautionary position themselves more aligned to the latter: "avoid contact".
" the illusions are easily exploited as a lever for all sorts of dark plans and urges."
-That's a given for Neoliberalism whatever the situation.