I am not actually an "extreme lockdown" person. After the vaccines were widely available, mostly returning to full normal life was inevitable. But opening the pool and demanding everyone jump naked into it are different things. We can all enjoy a relatively uncrowded pool, in appropriate swimwear, sometimes.
The UK data has been right there and everone ignored it. Much like the US, the UK was hardly a model for handling covid, but they had vaccines early and a good vaccination program. And yet..