Here is the FT lockdown strictness tracker stretched to the same scale as the FT covid case chart, plotted for the maximum six countries that the FT chart allows, using Europe's "big five" plus Belgium because it's nearby and tracked (unlike Ireland which does not appear on the FT lockdown tracker).
Remember that comparisons between countries, or even between Spring 2020 and later, are fraught with difficulties because of different reporting standards, testing capacities and strategies, and so on. All we are interested in for now is whether the lockdown tracker bar darkening is followed by the case curve for that country turning more towards downhill — and I think it usually is.
Of course, the most interesting ones are where cases started to slow or fall without lockdown tightening, such as Spain in early November. That may be because there was some tightening not captured by the FT tracker, because some ineffective measures were replaced with more effective ones which resulted in no change in the FT's lockdown rating, because there was some non-law-based attitude change in the country's population (due to a high profile covid death or illness, perhaps?), because lockdowns in France and the UK had an effect in Spain, or for some other reason.
