I agree that misaligned wealth-incentives for politicians can be a serious issue, but I'm not convinced it's likely to apply here.
Unlike many political issues, this one threatens the nation's leaders personally, and the cabinet presumably has a far higher average age (and therefore vulnerability) than the general population.
As we've already seen with Iran, the people at the top aren't safe from infection.
I don't see that this is a criticism. This kind of decision-making should be based on expertise, not emotion.
It seems unlikely that they're unconcerned with the harm done. Minimising harm is the entire point of responding to the pandemic, after all.
> you can't "nudge" people to adopt certain behaviours in one country when the rest of the world is doing the opposite to what you advocate.
You've not shown that the nudge-based approach will be ineffective.