Honestly, I have to disagree there. You might not have been aware of the truly shambolic process of decision making, U-turns, failed promises and so on. It's not just the raw health casualty figures, it's the utter shambles in terms of education and all sorts of other things that were caused by government incompetence.
It's important to remember that the UK had relatively advanced warning by a week or two, because it went wild over the continent earlier. How did it use those two weeks? Kind of not at all. It was obvious the government did not want to lock down the country - expensive, difficult, etc. Basically, BoJo put it off for about a week or two, possibly in order to let some big events go ahead (including the Cheltenham Gold Cup, much favoured by the upper classes and attended by BoJo himself). That probably cost the UK about 20,000 deaths in a couple of months: from a Germany to an Italy at a stroke.
The government measures for covid-19 have been inconsistent, undermined by other arms of the goverments, weak, unclear, and so on. We had a staggering press conference where a government minister said something, and the chief scientific advisor had to come in straight after and say what the minister had told the press was flatly wrong.
Any way, step foward to November, and the dreaded "second wave". Essentially, the same shit again. Everyone can see the figures rising, and everyone knows it's coming. And then - yet again - BoJo hums and hahs and puts off the decision for a week or two, so that's another 10-20,000 extra people dead. Furthermore, the measures were designed to clear covid-19 cases right down and free the country for Christmas, but the measures were too soft and too late and failed - so now there are infections up the wazoo and the pain is really going to hit in the next 2-3 weeks. Plus we now have to have another uber-lockdown anyway.
So that's the UK: somehow managing to combine just about the most ineffectual anti-covid measures in western Europe AND the worst economic hit.
In some ways, the pandemic has however exploited long-standing problems in British governance and society. I think we have to look at the country and realise the assault on the civil service and local government since the 1980s has severely impaired the bureaucratic competence of the state, and potentially the state itself is not fit for purpose.