Being Asian, I felt the malicious leak conspiracies, the pandemic brought out many people were out for blood against random Asian-Americans, so there were legitimate reasons to shut down conspiracy theories like that immediately.

If there is something this leak showed is that everyone thought of this at some point, it’s a pretty human conclusion to have. However, the fact this could and has been used to hurt people was a reason to not make those thoughts public and justified suppressing them. I’m not a lawyer, I wonder if this qualifies as “a clear and present danger” which gives the government right to suppress certain forms of speech.