Look, all of this is CYA because of an election year. The Trump administration is being hyper-cautious because any and all deaths from this virus would be utilized to club the administration over the head from here to eternity. The administration's gut reaction to not close the country down was probably right, but, because of political ramifications, they had to do this to innoculate themselves from major criticism. It seems that, as more data is collected, there wasn't a need to utilize such draconian measures and it gave democrats the further ability to utilize more fascistic methods over their constituents.