"Ich, not only "unlikely" to have happened... it didn't! Yes, we are an island and had the perfect defence actually, if we had been brave enough to use it. It would have caused some problems of course, but also avoided.... how many UK deaths now? How many bankrupt businesses? Sometimes, you have to look longterm and not just what is more popular or easier. "
We might be (a set) island(s) but not isolated.
No country in the world of any importance has managed to stave off the virus to any real degree so while yes, in theory we could have done this and we could have done that, the likelihood that it might actually have happened is so remote as not to be worth hand-wringng over.
As for bankrupt business, there might have been more, actually, because I don't see how you could have got away without an even more drastic lockdown, put in place in an emergency before there were any financial safeguards in place.
My main gripe with the government actually is trying to talk up things that were not worth talking up: whether it was "we'll be back to normal by summer (2020!), we'll have a wonderful test and trace etc etc. The only thing that has been wonderful in the vaccination programme. The rest has been pretty much disastrous, but look around the world and it's pretty bad there too.