@LesterBiggott when you say we shouldn't have locked down for so long, that sounds like it means you think we should have had some lockdown. Is that correct?
If it is, that means furlough. Any period of lockdown does. Because so many people in this country live on what they get paid and have no other way to fund themselves, and because lockdown needs enough people who are willing and able to stay at home. Otherwise it doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
If people who have been banned from doing their usual jobs are out doing cash in hand work because they're desperate for money, or protesting, or even just sufficiently alienated from the government that they think fuck you all I'll do what I like, they have more contacts than they would when they're at home. That makes the lockdown less likely to reduce contacts.
There's also the issue of furlough for childcare. Schools function as childcare in our system, so when millions of children are all of a sudden no longer in school, that has an impact on their parents ability to work. So again if a lockdown is to reduce contacts, which is what it's basically for, it has to pay enough parents to stay at home out of the way with their kids. If that doesn't happen, they start doing stuff like cobbling together ad hoc childcare networks with whoever happens to be free, which again means more contacts.
I'm lockdown questioning fwiw, but lockdown itself absolutely requires the state to give people money to stay at home. Otherwise you might as well not bother.