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I don't believe it is fair to call what the qualified scientific community is doing as "censorship", in fact I would go even further and say that calling it as such is purely political propaganda.

The scientific community is doing the studies, all the studies, every possibility is be analyzed & tested, even the most outlandish claims are being thoroughly tested in many many scientific studies/trials. Every scientist in any related field wants to be the one to find a cure, or find the source, or find any other relevant information on this disease (for the career advancement, the citations, the bragging rights). That the scientific community is correctly trying (and unfortunately failing) is to suppress the spread of false and/or misleading information that is not supported by the science, like the following:

1. Sensationalist press releases that are not supported by the underlying scientific paper.

2. Press releases propping-up weak new papers/studies that are less statistically powerful than the current consensus and therefore don't change the consensus.

3. The general press proping up scientific pre-prints without peer review.

>>Skeuom+(OP)
> The scientific community is doing the studies, all the studies, every possibility is be analyzed & tested, even the most outlandish claims are being thoroughly tested in many many scientific studies/trials

This is misinformation. A group of prominent virologists wrote, early in the pandemic:

> The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

It's nice to _believe_ that scientists are pursuing every possible theory. But in actual reality, some scientists are demanding that other scientists not pursue certain theories. That's what's happening in the real world that we live in. Don't let your idealized mental image of "science" blind you to the facts.

>>Skeuom+(OP)
The whole point of the present article is that the "current consensus" has been astroturfed, and is based on no evidence whatsoever. If you allow me to get more cynical, several journalists have now written about how (1) natural origins was initially popularized as a "consensus" view by just a few scientists on Twitter an effort to smear Tom Cotton. Due to the political valence, this messaging caught on with journalists.

(2) The correspondence of the authors behind the initial Lancet article which dismisses non-natural origin investigations as conspiracy theory (seeking to build the consensus view and much cited by the above jornalists) has been obtained by FOIA. It reveals the authors engaging in conspiracy and collusion: the managing editor bypassed the normal editorial process, the authors decided not to have some people sign so the statement would look less partisan and chose wordings that they knew were not supported by evidence, in particular deciding to ignore concerns about the very unlikely codons at the furin cleavage site. Moreover, none of the authors declared conflicts of interest. (And still, after much outcry, only one has made such a declaration.)

In short, any consensus for a natural origin is very much artificial and should be considered irrelevant.

>>will42+3w1
Realistically, at that stage, the origin of the virus was far less important than the other research.

If the narrative that it was an accidental lab leak took hold (even if that really is the case), China would likely cease all cooperation on the rest of the science.

It is both reasonable and rational then for the virologists to condemn such theories, to avoid harming the more important research into how infectious the disease it, what the symptoms are, what mitigations might be effective, etc, all of which could be helped by cooperation with China.