For those of us who care about honest and open debate, it is infuriating when media figures, Big Tech companies, or government officials try to quash debate and cover up arguments by declaring them dangerous disinformation.

The yearslong efforts by the media, Big Tech, and the federal government to stifle inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 are a perfect demonstration of this ugly practice. The latest news, leaked out of a congressional inquiry into the pandemic’s origins, shows how these anti-“misinformation” police were not only illiberal but also dangerous.

The people in power tried to choke off any suggestion that COVID-19 emerged from the virus lab in Wuhan, and thus made it less likely that lab safety would ever improve.

Vanity Fair is out with a feature citing the closed-door testimony of coronavirus expert Ralph Baric. It ought to make us even angrier than we were at the would-be censors and the media folks who declared that a lab leak was impossible.

Branding facts, opinions, or arguments as “disinformation” is a plea to wave the rules of free speech and open inquiry. When bureaucrats, politicians, editors, and Big Tech do this, they are saying that they are 100% certain that they are correct, those who disagree are dead wrong, and that exposing the public to the “wrong” opinion or facts will cause serious and irreversible harm.

I’m a conservative in part because I think humans are not as smart or knowledgeable as we think we are. I think that when the experts are totally certain about something, there’s a high risk that they are wrong. This conservative intellectual humility is, in fact, baked into the American system.

Part of the reason we have free speech is that we think debate and inquiry are necessary, and that nobody has a monopoly on the truth. Part of the reason we limit government power and create spheres of individual liberty is that we believe the government can make mistakes and abuse power. Federalism is also partly a reflection of this intellectual humility.

Recall that for more than a year after COVID-19 became the biggest story in the world, powerful institutions were declaring that it was impossible that the virus — first detected in Wuhan — could have leaked out of the virus laboratory in Wuhan that was doing experiments on coronaviruses.

Facebook banned stories suggesting the virus was manmade. The American Medical Association’s journal ran stories as late as 2023 branding the lab-leak hypothesis as misinformation.

Now check out, in that Vanity Fair piece, some of what coronavirus expert Ralph Baric said behind closed doors:

“Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV’s critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she did not heed his recommendation. Because the WIV continued to perform coronavirus research at what he considers an inappropriately low biosafety level, Baric said of a laboratory accident, ‘You can’t rule that out. … You just can’t.’”

And further:

“Baric also weighed in on a controversy that has pitted Dr. Anthony Fauci against Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has leveraged his credentials as an eye doctor to position himself as a crusader against America’s scientific and medical establishments. In contentious Senate hearings, Fauci has repeatedly denied Paul’s claims that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci led at the time, had funded gain-of-function research at the WIV. However, Baric told investigators that the experiment in dispute, in which technicians created a chimeric virus that made lab mice sicker, was ‘absolutely’ gain-of-function research: ‘You can’t argue with that.’ He also said he felt that the experiment’s results should have triggered regulatory review.”

So the 100% sure experts in the government, the media, and Big Tech were 100% wrong to be certain. But here’s where they were actually endangering people:

Shooting down even the question of whether the virus leaked out of a lab, and shooting it down as racist or harmful, stops any discussions of whether virology labs need to be made safer and how they could be.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Baric has lots of opinions on that, but his view was for years dismissed by the media, government, and tech industry.

It turns out that cutting off debate can cut off access to the truth.