I agree it was muddled and limp in that it wasn't put across sufficiently forcefully to spur government action early enough.
But you are being far too broad saying you are sick of "science", and that is quite a damaging thing to do. Science led to the lockdown in Wuhan. Science led to the South Korean response. Science led to German response. Science has provided medical care apparatus in its existing form and science will soon produce more effectual medicines and eventually a vaccine. A scientific approach was used to gauge the NHS's readiness for a pandemic and found it wanting. That science was done by scientists.
After all that came the politics.
By the same token, science is not a magic bullet that can answer all questions instantly. We knew what the known unknowns were. Some of those blanks could have been filled in by preparedness or a faster response to building up testing capacity. There was weeks of notice to put that action into place from around the world and even the much maligned scientists at Imperial.
Why didn't it happen? That's politics again.
Some of the failings happened because the committee was not looking for consensus but relying instead on a single group. They, in turn, were trying their best with a limited data set in the early days. Questions should have been asked when that small team were clearly at odds with other scientists the world over.