I believe having Trump as president exacerbated many, many things during that time, and this is one example. He was quick to start blaming the "Chinese", he tried to turn it into a reason to dislike China and Chinese people, because he doesn't like China, and he's always thinking in terms of who he likes and dislikes. This made it hard to talk about the lab leak hypothesis without sounding like you were following Trump in that. If we had had a more normal president, I don't think this and other issues would have been as polarized, and taking nuanced stances would have been more affordable.