Wall Street Journal columnist Joel Zinberg today reminds us that in 2020 the Biden campaign in general and Kamala Harris specifically “maligned President Trump’s claims about the speed of vaccine development and questioned its safety and effectiveness. New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo cast doubt on FDA evaluations of Covid-19 vaccines and said states should conduct their own reviews. An Aug. 27 letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asking governors for help setting up vaccine distribution elicited a statement from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer questioning the safety of the vaccines in development. Media ‘fact checkers’ said rapid vaccine development would take a ‘miracle.’”
Coincidentallu, Between April and December, Zinberg noted, the share of Americans who told pollsters they were likely to consent to vaccination declined from 74 percent to 56 percent.
Reuters quoted Joe Biden back in September as saying, “Let me be clear: I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump. At this moment, the American people can’t either.”
In an editorial today the WSJ reported that on Monday two Democrat congressional representatives “sent letters pressing 12 cable and tech CEOs to drop contracts with right-of-center media outlets including Fox News. Two days later the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing about ‘disinformation and extremism’ in conservative media. The only notable extremism on display was the majority party’s appetite for regulating and policing the free press.”A Texas Democrat representative said at the hearing that he saw a tension between “the freedom of speech versus other peoples’ safety.”
Like what was said by Biden, Harris, Cuomo, Schumer and certain media fact checkers?
From Kimberley Strassel’s WSJ column today: “Right now, the greatest threat to free speech in this country is not any law passed by the government— the First Amendment stands as a bulwark,” says Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr. “The threat comes in the form of legislating by letterhead. Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying.”
This observation came after Twitter, Facebook and others banned prominent conservatives, Twitter locked the account of the New York Post for reporting news about the Democratic presidential nominee’s son, Google and Apple dropped Parler from their app stores and Amazon banned a three-year-old book questioning transgenderism.
There is more than one way to skin a free speech cat.
4TH ST8 
Twitter suspended my account back in January, without explanation, during their initial purge. As a consequence, I was prevented from participating virtually at the Clark County Commission meeting. Why, you might ask? Because they used Periscope TV. I was not allowed to access it, because my Twitter account is suspended. Naturally, the seven Democrats on the commission voted that day to rename McCarran to Harry Reid International Airport. They gleefully rub our noses in it.
You intimate that criticism of the COVID vaccine by Democrats was responsible for fewer Americans wanting to sign up for vaccination. Maybe my experience is unusual, but the vast majority of people expressing doubts about the safety of the vaccine seem to be Republicans, who would have paid no attention to the yammering of Democrats anyway. According to a poll conducted in Colorado by Magellan Strategies showed 89% of Democrats expressing willingness to be vaccinated vs 29% of Republicans. Are you sure it wasn’t Republican words that changed the polls you cited? https://coloradosun.com/2021/02/26/colorado-vaccine-partisanship-poll/
The WSJ claims that 2 Democrats sent letters to CEOs and the hearings on disinformation and extremism in Conservative media are examples of free speech, no? Would you have them suppressed?
I agree that Facebook and Twitter, et al, should not be able to directly censor political content, but I also don’t believe they should be allowed to select what gets directed to the eyes of the public by use of secret algorithms.
Conservatives are continually fearful of big government leading us into a 1984 world order, but I think the greater threat may well have been spotted by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. From Neil Postman:
“Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their own oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture…In 1984, …people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.”
he loved Big Brother.