Yeah, I think it could be argued that it's largely been a public communication issue - obviously the term "herd immunity" was thrown into the discourse a little unwisely and they've since backed as carefully away from that as they can. Which is ironic since they're the ones being guided by public psychologists.
And yes, you're quite right, France and Spain have fucked this up, and it's already been reported that the detail of the policy response in Italy, shutting schools leaving grandparents on childcare duty, was one reason for its spread into the elderly demographic there.
They UK has had an issue with Downing St using journalists such as Peston to brief the public indirectly, that should probably be cut back.
Clearly the UK has adjusted its approach as first indicated to the public, and they've also been outstripped by things like the Premier League postponement, which they initially argued was not necessary. But that's fine, they will need to be adaptive throughout this.
It's a grim conclusion but at the moment nowhere is holding this back effectively except those places that have prior experience with lethal flu outbreaks, highly developed and orderly societies with the capacity to implement a high bandwidth of public testing and produce the devices and consumables for the medical response, and the collective will to impose extremely strong measures, like Taiwan and Singapore.
