> Also, one wonders if EU states would have been better at closing their borders at the start of the pandemic (like Australia or New Zealand did) if it wasn't for the EU.
It's a fair question. OTOH, here in the UK, we were extremely slow to close our borders (in fact we've never closed our borders fully in the way that say Australia or NZ did, nor anything close), with the justification being that the UK is an international hub.
The real reason, of course, is that our government is too spineless and inept to take such decisive action, and has the collective intellect of a colony of woodlice.
I don't know enough about the EU decision making process around closing borders to know if their bureaucracy was a problem. I know Italy introduced restrictions fairly early on (back in February, or maybe early March 2020), but I do remember being surprised that people were still allowed to cross the border between Switzerland and Italy for work purposes even whilst the pandemic was raging in Italy. (Switzerland isn't in the EU, obviously.) I also remember being surprised that ski resorts such as Aprica, in Italy, were still open as late as the beginning of the second week of March in 2020.
The UK is very densely populated, particularly in south east England, compared to many countries, so risk of accelerated transmission is and always has been considerably higher. We also have an ageing population with a history (at a population level) of making poor lifestyle choices who have accrued a significant burden of pre-existing medical conditions (not unlike the USA), with the distribution across the whole of the country not entirely mirroring population density. Again, this increases the severity of COVID for those who fall into affected demographics.
With that being said, I have no doubt that more decisive measures earlier in the pandemic, more consistently applied throughout the pandemic, would have led to a significant reduction in both the human and economic costs of the pandemic in our country.
I would like to see Boris Johnson and his cadre of fawning, useless imbeciles stripped of their citizenships and banished to a frozen wasteland to endure an existence of hard labour for the rest of their natural lives. Their abject failure to step up and lead in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced since WWII - to discharge their most basic responsibilities to the people of this country - absolutely disgusts me.
I accept that I am likely to be disappointed.