It's related to self-censorship. Look at what happened to Martin Kulldorff. He was a statistician at Harvard that had some controversial takes during the pandem

It's related to self-censorship. Look at what happened to Martin Kulldorff. He was a statistician at Harvard that had some controversial takes during the pandemic. He got dismissed. Pretty sure you can find accounts from him about the pressure he faced. It became clear during the pandemic that you couldn't communicate nuance to the public and that people were just picking sides out of fear.