My guess is that they'll end up having to do more stringent social distancing measures anyway, but that a lot of people will end up having unnecessarily died because they waited so long relative to other countries. Because currently they are on track for an unreasonable number of deaths, and it would reasonable to change the course of action so that that doesn't happen.

I'm not seeing a lot of subtlety in these outcomes, nor possibility of both sides (credibly) claiming that they were right. We'll know soon enough either way.