Now it's bearing fruit, people seriously doubt EVERYTHING official. If anyone with a degree or a generally trusted platform says something, a worrying number of people reflexively don't accept it as fact - instead they make up their own facts or get them from people they, for some reason, trust.
Worse, they will actively promote falsehoods which do harm to themselves and to others.
There might have been issues with censoring the lab leak theory, perhaps there were reasons for that such as it not being publicly proven, there was conjecture, etc. but because someone chooses to believe in it, and someone else do not then you got a split reality between them.
Rinse and repeat for a multitude of topics and we get to where we are.
The USA is the canary in the coal mine for this, or perhaps the seed that's spreading across many other countries, hard to tell. Given the free speech absolutism I personally believe it's a bit of both, it's the canary that also seeded a whole movement of conspiracy theorists grifters. I see that happening in Brazil as well, following on the footsteps of what people like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, etc. created in the USA. And now in Europe I see glimpses of it everywhere.
This doesn't happen when they fail it happens when they lie to manipulate the public.
For instance: With the lab leak theory, I believe that was suppressed because the authorities didn't want some kind of backlash against China, therefore regardless of any merits the theory had, it was treated as absolutely false and unspeakable. With masks, I believe the authorities very publicly said they didn't work, because they didn't want the public to consume them.
I don't think they'd have lost trust if they hadn't done stuff like that, or spoke with a false confidence when they were just guessing.
And I say this as someone who followed all the recommendations during COVID, except for using a mask when they were telling people not to.