The problem wasn't the consensus of the scientific community. The problem was that we needed answers now, and there wasn't time for the scientific community to

The problem wasn't the consensus of the scientific community. The problem was that we needed answers now, and there wasn't time for the scientific community to arrive at a consensus. So the Powers That Be(TM) grabbed onto an opinion from the scientific community, and labeled everyone who didn't agree as "unscientific". That's not how science works, and it gave a black eye to everything that calls itself scientific. Note that it was primarily non-scientists who did this. They could have said "while scientists have not yet arrived at certainty, the best answer we have at the moment is..." - but they didn't. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten any more buy-in down that road than they did on the "trust the science" road, but they wouldn't have destroyed the public's trust in science in the process.