But even in your framing, I think they could have simply not said anything for a few days to the general public while healthcare workers went and scooped up whatever was still floating around in the consumer inventory. Coming clean and saying we think this might help, but the supply is low and they're more important for healthcare workers would have built trust rather than creating another transparent move that undermined it.

I do get they were under significant pressure, especially with the anti-leadership above them causing unnecessary chaos for political gains. I just think if we're doing a postmortem here we should acknowledge that the lying was a mistake.