All governments consist of politicians, who are not-very-intelligent people who watch opinion poll results with as much attention as they can muster. When the mass media is presenting death all around (in other words, sensationalizing the situation to generate revenue) politicians naturally scramble to appear to be doing something, anything, to protect their share of the votes. That this leads to false statements, rushed decisions, and generally very poor crisis management in general can come as no surprise. This is one of the many fundamental weaknesses of representative democracy: the media tells the mob what to believe and then the mob screams for whatever the media has told them will "save" them and politicians rush to give the mob whatever it is shouting for. This is never a recipe for adequate and informed decision-making. Fortunately in the case of SARS-CoV2 it hasn't really mattered very much - the percentage of people impacted seriously is a tiny fraction of the population, and the statistics on blood clots etc. are essentially meaningless when compared to the total population.

But when we one day have to face a serious infection, the prognosis will be very bleak indeed.