They call themselves progressives because they use an incremental approach to impose levels of tyranny that would be resisted fiercely if inflicted all at once. The camel with its nose in the tent is a good metaphor for their strategy. The boiling frog that doesn’t jump out of the pot so long as you heat the water slowly enough is better still. With Covid tyranny, they may have heated the water too fast to avoid resistance:

On a tip from DCGere.