Had they acknowledged that their model of the disease was wrong, they would have suggested that those at the highest risk (the elderly in particular) needed isolation and masks, and that was all that was needed. The model they relied on assumed that those diagnosed as “positive” was what normally happen if you were infected with Covid19, and half of those became seriously ill and 5% might die. Projected to the whole population, it would make Covid19 similar to smallpox or perhaps even “Black death”.
It turned out, and the evidence was there all along, that those identified from testing with only 5% of the actual cases, and 95% of the “victims” don’t get ill enough to worry about. This make Covid19 into a slightly more dangerous version of the “flu” that makes it rounds every winter, but hardly into something threatening the social or economic order. The junk science led to politicians doing horrific damage, including closing schools, wiping out people’s savings, destroying their jobs and in many countries causing mass starvation.
Trump was right when he though this wasn’t a serious problem. Covid19 isn’t much of a disease, but it triggered a massive and destructive panic. Covid19 won’t make it into the medical history book, but into the psychological history books as an example of what dumb people do when they panic.