I’m divided on “did the public demand lockdowns?”. Certainly, the government was reluctant to lock down, especially Boris. It looks as if the government decided that once lockdown seemed inevitable, they’d really go for it, even though they knew it was too late.
I do think the public demanded lockdowns going on and on and on, once they’d started. They’d got used to the idea, and the lovely cuddly trustable Boris 😇had sold them the idea of “people will die”, “furlough for as long as necessary”, “we will do whatever it takes to keep you safe”, “stay at home, don’t kill granny”, “the police will come after those who break lockdown” (even the police didn’t know this until he said it), “no need to worry about an exit plan, this is the new normal”, it was then politically impossible to ease lockdown. We could have let the virus rip in summer 2020 and lessened the autumn impact, but the government medicine of fear had worked too well, and the public were baying for more and more lockdown. It might have been a form of Stockholm syndrome.
I’m not saying this is the right way, but let’s say Thatcher had been in charge instead. She would probably have openly said that it would be best to let the virus rip, and a good thing for the elderly to die off: in her time, it was more acceptable for politicians to tell the blunt economic truth. Then if she’d had to lock down under duress, she would have laid it on thick about the economic damage lockdowns would cause, while barely mentioning the virus at all. Lockdown would have been much shorter. She would probably have gone the other way with manipulating death figures: pretending that fewer people were dying, rather than more. And maybe she would have been pilloried in the same way Boris was for partygate, but we would thane had fewer deaths, and much less damage in out her ways.