The latest data can be wrong. No different than how there was a period of time where UV light was considered this evil to avoid, and now we know it's actually pretty critical to get sunlight in moderation (and completely avoiding UV causes its own issues). This seems to be a problem with US health science where they will find something bad like partially hydrogenated fats (a terrible man made substance), and then go on to claim "fats are bad" (this is back in the 90s ish). The health system just ignored the long history of diets that were relatively high in fats (actual good natural fats), and tried to use "data". Ultimately data is only as good as our ability to measure, which is limited with something like the human body. That overcorrection has since come back to a more reasonable middle point but still has some issues.
It's undisputed that drinking a lot of alcohol is bad for you, but I don't see clear data for the grey area. If I fed a rat a whole bunch of vinegar day after day in large quantities it would get health problems, yet drinking a bit of apple cider vinegar, salt and vinegar chips, etc. are all fine, likely beneficial (pickled vegetables are good for you).
I'm not saying that there's any proof that alcohol is beneficial yet, but the lack of clear data for that grey area of risk is interesting. In Japan for example it's believed that drinking sake in moderate quantities has health benefits.
I guess going back to the sunlight analogy, it's hard to believe that a substance that has been around as long as alcohol has could be so toxic that occasional consumption has any meaningful negative effect.