What does this tell us about government officials?

That they deal exclusively in propaganda, with no regard to the real world.

No, we already knew that.

That the majority are career politicians, not domain experts.

I expect those politicians should have advisory staff exactly for handling such cases, as there's never a domain expert in the lead (and there are different opinions also in every field). Now if that advisory works as expected, that's another story - maybe the politicians won't ask, maybe the advisors would represent some interests, maybe...