I assume that you mean "censored" and not "censured" (different thing), but it was not, in fact, censored. It was entirely in the open.
However, the information was definitely not distilled effectively for the average layperson. I remember thinking at the time that the CDC was seriously ham-handed when it came to communicating with the general public. I even initially blamed the Trump administration, but when the Biden administration took over, they did not improve communication either. My conclusion since then is that the CDC is dominated by academic types--which is largely appropriate given their mission--but that they also put academic types in PR roles, which was a disaster.
Hardly. I heard this “questioning the dominant narrative” over and over again. Disagreement is not censure. As far as I am aware, the only people who faced any penalties at all were doctors who went so far outside the realm of evidence-based medicine that they caused demonstrable harm and therefore had their licenses revoked. Which is good.
I believed in the lab leak theory so for me getting the vaccine was a no brainer. I could get infected by one of two things developed in a lab, only one of which had clinical trails on humans. I went with the clinically tested option.
perfectly understandable and you’ve described a reasonable decision-making process
any reasonable person should be able to recognize that the alternative hypothesis was not an equally accepted decision
many people chose severe penalties rather than participate in a sudden worldwide field trial of mRNA vaccination by indemnified pharmaceutical companies, and in some parts of the world were not even given that choice.
We were also subjected to a sudden worldwide field trial of a novel coronavirus, so it makes sense that it requires a similar response to combat it. I think in any other decade this would've been celebrated as a major scientific achievement.
If the moon landing happened today people would just be cynical about it just being an arms race with the Soviet Union to develop better ICBMs. This is of course true, but it doesn't make the achievement any less impressive.
However, the information was definitely not distilled effectively for the average layperson. I remember thinking at the time that the CDC was seriously ham-handed when it came to communicating with the general public. I even initially blamed the Trump administration, but when the Biden administration took over, they did not improve communication either. My conclusion since then is that the CDC is dominated by academic types--which is largely appropriate given their mission--but that they also put academic types in PR roles, which was a disaster.