Taiwan, Singapore, NZ to name but some.
These countries have a far smaller population than the UK. In fact if you add the three together you get roughly the same number as the UK. London alone has a bigger population than Singapore or New Zealand.
Taiwan was one of the worst hit countries back in 2003 with SARs - so rightly they invested in Epidemic control. But they also have methods of government control that would unpalatable with the UK population, for example - your phone tracking your whereabouts 24/7 and health officials tracking you down should you choose to wander off anywhere.
Singapore hospitalised everyone over the age of 45 with that tested positive with Covid (irrespective of severity) - how would a country of nearly 67 million handled that? Singapore has about 380k people over the age of 70 (the most vulnerable to Covid), yet the UK has ~7 million over 70 - that's more than the entire population of Singapore.
Jacinda Smugface might gloat about how their country tackled the pandemic, but ultimately Sadiq Khan oversees a bigger population than she does. NZ has a population density of 18 per sq Km, London? 5701.
If you want to compare us to other countries, look at France. Roughly the same population - 67million to our 66.65million. Granted, they have around 80k deaths (compared to our 120k), but have less than half the population density (122 per sq Km to our 275 per sq Km). There are other variables, such as obesity rates (which has a huge effect on Covid survivability) and general population health (in which France is better than than us on both counts) which also have to be factored.
The wheels of power move slowly and in step with what the population and the press will let them get away with. Cygnus was 4 years before the Covid-19 outbreak. I agree that the government should have been much better prepared for a large scale pandemic, but given that there only a handful of global pandemics in the entirety of the 20th Century, you could imagine the outcry from an media-fueled austerity-ridden populace about spending large quantities of cash on equipment that could have sat gathering dust in a warehouse for potentially decades. Hindsight eh?
Again - a lot of mistakes were made. People died that probably shouldn't. But if you don't like the Government, make it known at the ballot box at the next local and general elections.
