Having a vocal minority protesting against something usually don't slow down politicians when they have clear goals[1], but they become a convenient excuse not to act when they don't want to.
[1] I've marched in vain for many causes, most of which had much, much more intense protests than what Covid restrictions triggered.
Let's say you marched for "in favor of choice", but the politicians chose to ignore you because they're backed by just-as-large numbers of people who feel strongly the other way.
With COVID, people who felt strongly about staying at home, were probably the minority, especially as time went on.
If a new pandemic starts in 10 years, people will still be burnt out from the last one and resist closure in greater numbers, immediately.
Had government acted as quickly as their population wanted them to st the beginning (that is: before it was too late), stay-at-home could have lasted much less time: when a things double every 4 days and take 2 weeks to half, waiting just 16 days before lockdown makes you need two additional months of lockdown to get back to the same point, which is exactly my point about people in charge not acting before it's too late.
Looking back, nothing could have prevented the pandemic, if not China itself in January. Once the virus was traveling, you can’t prevent spread. There will always be countries and people who will not follow the rules.
The lockdown did save lives, but could not do anything else.
Given that contagion to African and South American countries came from Western Europe, at a stage when China already had gained control over the Virus inside its borders, it's not clear that “nothing could have prevented the pandemic”.
It's obviously something that governments who failed to act want you to believe, but it's not definitive truth. Maybe the uncontrolled situation in Iran would have been enough for the pandemic to happen, but travel from Iran is also much less important (in volume and economic consequences) than travel from the US, France or UK, so there's no certitude here.
And again, late lockdown did save lives, but with huge economic cost whereas early lockdowns saved many more lives with only a fraction of the economic cost, people who delayed the lockdown bear the entire responsibility of the additional deaths and economic disaster.
