Well no, I would prefer that they never lied to begin with. There is a difference between making mistakes, and intentionally lying.
When you couple the lying here and the early lies about masks, alongwith the censoring of people who were calling it out...then you just end up proving the conspiracy theorists right.
Again, there is a difference between lying (which is the case here - and not the first time they lied to the public), and making an honest mistake.
Lying should never be part of science, and certainly never when it comes to public communication from our health experts. Once you ruin trust, it takes a long ass time to get it back.
This shouldn't be political. Everybody should be able to acknowledge how unacceptable this is.