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.