Progressives Have Moved To the Next Phase of COVID-Debate Political Correctness: Suppressing the Truth Was Good

The trajectory:  The lab-leak hypothesis is unsupported by evidence --> LLH is a conspiracy theory so should be suppressed --> suppress inquiry and discussion of LLH --> we're not suppressing inquiry about LLH --> sure we suppressed debate but that was good.

   In this case there was no COVID does not exist phase...I guess that was a bridge too far.

   (In a weird inversion of roles, some fringy righties actually did--and still do--deny that COVID exists. It was really, literally, actually just the flu. One big case of mistaken identity...)

   It's a familiar pattern by now:

   The evidence available and understandable by ordinary, intelligent people points to x, but the progressive establishment wants not-x to be true--or, anyway, believed. Debate begins. Progressive establishment decrees that x is a conspiracy theory / crazy / "mis/dis/mal-information," / racist/x-ist/x-phobic. MSM, social media, universities, the bureaucracy, etc. ban any politically incorrect discussion of x, and decree that certain language must or cannot (e.g.: 'Wuhan virus,' 'China virus') be used. This continues either indefinitely or at least until the issue has cooled off and the truth can slowly be admitted with minimal loss of face by and faith in the progressive establishment. (Hunter's laptop just had to be suppressed for a few weeks--though, hey, longer is better. And they were able to stifle it for a few months without much trouble. So why not?)

   Seriously, the dispassionate advice about this is: we ought to simply ignore it and keep inquiring about x. The fact that the progressive establishment is religiously devoted to not-x and suppressing inquiry about x counts neither for nor against x. 

   In actual fact, I've started giving the xs additional weight in such cases.

   I'm not proud of that, but it hasn't been a bad rule of thumb...