I tend to lean more towards the belief that it was just a bad position all around. People had to make the best decisions they could with little or false information. Lord knows the stuff that was coming from our leader at the time was absolute trash and not helpful at all. I think a lot of mistakes were made, but many of them were out of ignorance versus actual ill intent.
It so often is from governments - how often do they get it right?
And the false information was coming from the governments themselves globally, while those who gave the correct information, were "cancelled"