No. The response was overwhelmingly political and censorious and it has everything to do with the extremist culture around politics where if Trump said "A" it must be "not A" and viceversa.

You're justifying that censorship saying that the "wrongthink people" were close to this so that's why it was mostly shunned.

It's disingenuous. This whole year and counting (specially in places with slow vaccine rollouts) has been full of instances where certain challenges to the official local government doctrine where combated heavily with not much argument other than personal attacks and requests for faith in the "one true narrative".