I don't think the government has deliberately led us up the garden path. I think the problem is we are, and have been for a very long time right back to the last Labour government, effectively governed by the media and policy is devised on the basis of its likely media reception not its effectiveness. And yet the media isn't interested in holding the government to account, only in tripping it up to create a story - "controlling the narrative" as it used to be called in the dark days of Blair and Mandleson.
In the case of coronavirus you've got an unprecedented situation where governments, western governments at least, have no experience to work with, only theory. And none of the scientific theory around handling the outbreak is clear-cut. All options have consequences and there is no happy magic wand outcome.
Add in the contortions, back-tracks and u-turns governments have become accustomed to performing in an effort keep the all-powerful media onside, or at least keep ahead of them in the electoral cycle and it's inevitable that the result is a dog's breakfast.
It's also apparent, probably as a consequence of this thrall to the media, that the civil service machinery of government isn't fit for purpose. It's become a marketing department where PR and resistance to change at all costs has replaced dutiful policy enactment.
To be fair to him, this the point Dominic Cummings has always made: Whitehall and the entire vast civil service web has become more obstructive than enabling and it needs purging. It's not the policy but the fact that whoever the government is and whatever it wants to achieve, nothing that deviates from business as usual will get executed. Therefore whoever is in government, at moments of genuine crisis the chances of effective governance and decisive action are almost nil.