For me, it’s not about the order of lockdowns. It’s about the fact that we’re late with everything required due to the PM’s pathalogoical fear of unpopularity and his desire to keep everyone happy. E.g. still dithering about incoming border quarantine many months after other countries have implemented it.
Severe lockdown rules applied early, before things are bad, is hard to justify and would have involved some courage and decisiveness. But it would have been an easier target for the naysayers.
Severe lockdown rules applied when - arguably - it’s too late can be justified by the devastating impact of the virus and the new strain. But cannot be argued with because, well - look at the hospitals, they’re already full. Obviously all caused by not doing it sooner.
Timing is exactly and lack of decisiveness is why we’re the worst performing country by most Covid-handling measures.
Does the virus know about this? Because you do understand that viruses are blissfully unaware of restrictions, lockdowns, masks, one way systems...
Seriously though, is it just possible that for most countries lockdowns just don't work, regardless of when they are introduced? For example where I live in Baildon just north of Bradford it is widely believed that the virus was here in mid December, 3 months before we locked down, and 2 weeks before we even knew it was an issue. If this was the case then even slamming the doors shut on New Year's Day would have been too late. And given that the "Kent variant" was discovered in September, it is entirely possible that the first lockdown actually helped it by supressing the previously dominant strain. This happens quite a lot in nature, one dominant strain gets suppressed & another one takes advantage.
The real pathological fear is the fear generated by governments around the world of the virus. We know the global IFR is somewhere in the region of 0.2-0.3%, serious enough to be an issue for governments to take a critical look at their healthcare provision, nowhere near enough to lock people up for months on end whilst the virus waits patiently by & governments experiment with punitive measure after punitive measure.