It was a legitimate concern and a ruinous strategy.

I believe that competent leadership could have rallied the public to the cause of reserving PPE for hospitals for a month. Even if you don't believe in the basic nobility of the common person, congress could easily have passed emergency confiscatory legislation to pull all PPE off consumer markets without public health officials knowingly misrepresenting the truth.

Trust in institutions was already low at the start of this, and the sort of misdirection that a series of supposedly noble lies has evinced has taken it to a new low and left us where we are now.