Thanks Muddy and Dave. It seems it's so hard to make comparisons between countries. For every one that seems to back a hypothesis (eg, my "hard and early"), there are others that don't and there are so many differences such as culture, population density etc.

Even saying track and trace is the way forward... That seems reasonable to me, and I can point to South Korea where it worked brilliantly. But then that's a very different country to the UK. Are there any countries with good track and trace systems where it hasn't worked?