We did not have a good debate over the origins of the virus because there was not enough evidence for one. And frankly that was the domain of the intelligence and biology communities, not Twitter users
The morale of this story is not about government censorship. Its not about false racism accusations or actual racism. Its about journalists and politicians running their mouths about things they don't know about, and dont have evidence for/against, and people listening because social media algorithms grab onto it.
I am not sure I entirely agree. Evidence, or at least theory that the virus was lab-made was vehemently suppressed. I remember Indian researchers presenting their evidence that there were some odd synthetic genome insertions and they were quickly dismissed.
https://www.opindia.com/2021/06/indian-scientists-had-found-...
Politicans should refrain from hurling childish insults at other nations, and journalists should refrain from publishing withering accusations as news, at least until the confidence is high. Maybe I am misremembering things, but that was more of a norm a decade ago.
We the People need an apology and an investigation.
Before the COVID 2020's pandemic nobody would have accepted that this kind of biological weapon could even get fully developed to a deployable status. Not saying it could unleash a global pandemic in a matter of few months.
Now we know and probably there's someone somewhere already working on some new advanced virus, beyond COVID19 original scope of sophistication. Hopefully with better lab security.