This is all very well but there seems a very wide interpretation of what social distancing, self isolation, quarantine and curfew mean. Moreover there is a very loose interpretation of these terms. The efficacy of proper isolation and quarantine depends to a high degree not on just on issuing loose instructions that are impractical and unenforceable. In the first lockdown there was less ambiguity about what it means. Shops were closed and streets were empty, but in the current lockdown this is far from the case in my experience. Also self isolation is nonsense. How do you ask someone who lives alone to self isolate when there is no official support system for those self isolating? How do those who have no source of income, self isolate and feed themselves. Then there are families in a flat for example. If someone gets the infection everyone will get it because it is impossible to self isolate in limited environments. The Tories in their mansions with several bathrooms might be able to manage. Then you come to enforcement, there is none and what there has been has been clumsy and rather selective, with politicians and others getting away with breaking their own rules.
This poor application of quarantine has meant that the measures were only partially effective, have to be done for longer and have caused more economic damage. No wonder the covid sceptics feel that lockdown has not done anything useful but lots of harm.
Then we come to test and trace. A very simple concept which is the bread and butter of public health and has been practiced for years. Why can we not have a local test and trace system successfully? Why farm it of to cronies who know nothing about public health. To this day there is no successful test and trace in this country.
But above all there has been a lack of leadership and that is apparent in all of the action of this government. This lack of leadership has cost many lives.