Public health measures shouldn’t be brutal or repressive. They’re nothing new; that’s why there are specific public health exemptions in human rights laws.
I understand objections to lockdowns, but one lockdown should get covid under control, and it should take two months maximum. There was genuine community spirit in the first UK lockdown. But it has to be worth it or people quite reasonably start thinking it’s pointless, so they turn against it.
There was never any leadership. The government itself did a U-turn by having a lockdown at all. We were never told what the point was or what we were trying to achieve, just vague nonsense about “flattening the curve to save the NHS”. That’s because it was a last moment panic reaction rather than any sort of coherent plan.