...
Plenty of doctors and scientists were censored for having an opinion which countered that of the authorities.
Not sure how they were censored. I mean, twitter doesn't count because thats not a government controlled source - its a private company. Also, from what I saw, the only "scientists" (quotes, because, well, there are plenty of medical doctors who aren't scientists, and scientists who aren't medical doctors, and those who will happily distort science to suit their needs) who were censored in some way - was because they were promoting ideas or theories that were both unproven and could make current efforts to handle the pandemic harder. Can you provide an example?
The pandemic showed us just how social media can be flooded with any kind of idea with little in the way of quality control.
Why is misinformation pushed by the authorities any better than, that spouted by some quack on twitter? The only difference is the former was accepted, yet the latter censored.
Because there is true accountability then. Official sources can of course be incorrect, and often was - hindsight is 20/20 - and we can hold them to account for their mistakes.
But having seemingly credible people (Doctors, Scientists, Weathly loons who consider themselves somewhat of a scientist/engineer) promote clearly incorrect and dangerous ideas on their wildly followed twitter accounts has real world consequences. Sure you could argue that those foolish enough to believe their crap about Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin are putting themselves in danger - but with the pandemic, peoples actions
put other people in danger.