The point you missed in the parent comment was that this is temporary. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it. I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional. We have discovered something bad...which would seem to be part of the reason of doing it.
The counterargument is obvious to anyone willing to think about it for a few seconds, but the article doesn't even bother addressing it. They even admit that the headline office without wifi was only without wifi for a few hours:
> In one Department of Health and Human Services office, there was no Wi-Fi or full electricity in the first hours when people returned last week.
...and yet this is in the headline. This all reeks of cherry-picking.