some people might like to quantify the risks that may or may not be associated with both in order to make informed decisions

unfortunately that line of reasoning was so censured that people started weaponizing it

I assume that you mean "censored" and not "censured" (different thing), but it was not, in fact, censored. It was entirely in the open.

However, the information was definitely not distilled effectively for the average layperson. I remember thinking at the time that the CDC was seriously ham-handed when it came to communicating with the general public. I even initially blamed the Trump administration, but when the Biden administration took over, they did not improve communication either. My conclusion since then is that the CDC is dominated by academic types--which is largely appropriate given their mission--but that they also put academic types in PR roles, which was a disaster.