I for one would not object if the moderator would delete this thread, now that we are getting into conspiracy theories unrelated to COVID. Not surprisingly, the same guys are on the other side of my fence.
Dover, You live on an island with a huge land mass in comparison to its population, and it is accessible via a very limited number of locations. Controlling an epidemic infectious disease in that setting is rather simple compared to the issues faced by most other larger countries. One possible reason for the screening system used by your government at the outset of the pandemic, if indeed your depiction is correct, would be that the previous Coronavirus outbreak, caused by the SARS virus at the turn of this century, was characterized by the fact that infected persons were not contagious UNTIL they first developed symptoms. It was not such a bad notion to screen for symptoms in those days when most medical authorities were thinking that SARS-CoV2 would behave much like SARS. Although it was far more deadly than SARS-CoV2, the SARS outbreak was largely overcome by quarantining those who became ill, immediately at the onset of symptoms. This is one reason why a vaccine for SARS was never developed, although several were in the pipeline. As it turned out, COVID is not like SARS; infected persons are contagious to others long before they become symptomatic. Quarantine is not nearly as effective.
Dover, You live on an island with a huge land mass in comparison to its population, and it is accessible via a very limited number of locations. Controlling an epidemic infectious disease in that setting is rather simple compared to the issues faced by most other larger countries. One possible reason for the screening system used by your government at the outset of the pandemic, if indeed your depiction is correct, would be that the previous Coronavirus outbreak, caused by the SARS virus at the turn of this century, was characterized by the fact that infected persons were not contagious UNTIL they first developed symptoms. It was not such a bad notion to screen for symptoms in those days when most medical authorities were thinking that SARS-CoV2 would behave much like SARS. Although it was far more deadly than SARS-CoV2, the SARS outbreak was largely overcome by quarantining those who became ill, immediately at the onset of symptoms. This is one reason why a vaccine for SARS was never developed, although several were in the pipeline. As it turned out, COVID is not like SARS; infected persons are contagious to others long before they become symptomatic. Quarantine is not nearly as effective.