Another delay like that would not have been accepted by the community. At least, I think that is what CDPR feared would come to fruition.
That is a valid point. But since a lot of things seem to be missing from HC, it would be highly advisable for CDPR to be open about that and address the concerns of the community by either saying why something is missing and saying whether it will be implemented in the coming weeks or not.
The key thing Burza and others from CDPR should be doing is assuring the existing player base that they are still hard at work and a good step would be to present a possible timeline for HC updates, especially adding in missing bits and pieces many players are looking for, that were present in old Gwent, such as reward overviews, Trinket titles and descriptions, etc, etc.
You could say these are all minor things, but in a full Gwent release they are things that are sorely missing. My guess would be CDPR barely had time to finish the core of HC and the result is a lot of minor things were left to be sorted out later, which is not ideal when you are trying to present Gwent as a complete full release coming out of 2+ years of Betas.