It might have to do with sponsorship obligations. It was probably a similar situation last year. Your more valueable to an advertiser if your still an actively competiting skater.
Publicity wise it's good timing. She'll get a nice media writeup about her withdrawl and along with her carefully curated progress videos she'll get a bump of goodwill for her comeback for next season which really is only later this year.
To the poster who is going to miss seeing her at Nationals she'll HAVE to do some sort of summer competion and/or regionals and sectionals so there will be more opportunities to see/meet her.
IDK, this whole situation makes me side-eye USFS and Gracie's current team. Why did they allow her to use her one allowed ISU comeback when she wasn't ready? Regardless of what has been happening in practice, Rostelecom should have been a wake up call and they probably knew quickly that Nationals wasn't plausible. The dramatics on Vincent's instagram leading up to Gracie's withdrawal are ridiculous imo. If he wanted to post vids of the jumps, fine, but Gracie is an adult. She can post them on her own social media if she feels ready for it. I don't believe that she didn't go to his page to see what people were saying. It seems like he was trying to play PR agent and I just don't think sponsorships are realistic right now. They are hard to come by in an Olympic year and ever harder in years when skating doesn't matter to the general public. Right now, who other than Nathan, D/W and the Shibs have consistent sponsorships from the larger companies in the US? I can't think of any.
I know this is ranty, but I just hope going forward, decisions are more calculated because this could have been a very damaging experience and if Beijing is the goal, slow and steady is what matters.