I think one has to consider that infection waves happen at different times in different locations. Looking quickly at the graphs for cases on worldometer for Germany, France and UK you’ll see that Germany and France had many more cases during April/May/June of 2021 than did UK. So I’m not inclined to infer population civic mindedness characteristics from any of it.
As Clark keeps reminding us (not a criticism) the only things that appear to have made a significant difference is or was the early use of lockdown, effective track, trace and quarantine and border closure and those countries that did so spent much less time in lockdown.
For interest here is a graph of mortality in England and Wales from the 1918 flu pandemic.
