No, I'm not criticizing the officials for failing to reach the correct decision or adopt the correct viewpoints faster than they did. Institutions are large and risk-averse, data was incomplete, and people make mistakes.

I'm criticizing them for suppressing the dissemination of ideas that did later turn out to be correct. I hope the distinction is clear.

If you're going to impose a ban on the dissemination of ideas, you'd better be ten thousand percent sure that nothing covered by that ban later turns out to be the truth. Not a single one, not even if every other idea that got banned was correctly identified as a falsehood. Otherwise, the whole apparatus falls apart and institutions lose trust.

I'm not forgetting ivermectin overdoses. I don't believe my picture is rosy. I'm aware of all the garbage ideas out there, which is why the measles is back and all the other madness. But I'm firmly of the opinion that trying to suppress these bad ideas has only redoubled their strength in the backlash, and caused a rejection of expert knowledge altogether.