At least the NHS weren't overwhelmed in April ;-)
Though the reality is they were, and couldn't deal with it all, so many of the NHS staff were also overwhelmed, and a good many died as a result.
The reality is that we (as a country) had no idea what we were really dealing with, and we had no idea how to treat it.
We were then hit by the worst scenario of people travelling to the worst areas in our own half term holidays, just as other countries were getting to their peak of local transmission.
So you can blame government all you like, but at the end of the day we were in a very shit position, sure there were things we could have done better (mainly in hindsight - and there still are even today), but we were pretty much fucked by the fact that many people in the southeast/london area had half term skiing breaks or holidays to spain, just as it was running amok, they all came home and went about their normal lives packing trains and tubes not knowing they were transmitting the virus, a lot of those travel for work, so took it to all corners of the country, and there it spread further.