[ben_w]

a) not my government, see profile

b) there's two ways of censoring info: 1) to ban the truth and 2) to bury it under a pile of distractions; IMO during in a medical emergency such as this, allowing people to distract from "this is a deadly pandemic" with "it really matters which of two things we have no control over caused this" is just as deadly as China banning reporting of the fact that people were getting ill.

"You can sort out which thing you frenemies did wrong later, right now you need to buck up and resist the disease itself", kinda thing.

[rexer]

There's a difference between saying "there are more important things (to you) to put your energy towards" and "the lab leak theory is wrong, stop talking about it"

The former is reasonable, the latter is not (assuming the theory is unproven either way at the time).