The people of Britain were distracted from the natural disaster because they were angry about the exposure of government sleaze. The government broke their own rules and had a large gathering and Christmas party during the 2020 Christmas lockdown. It was only a year before that we had the 2019 Christmas snap election to break the Brexit Deadlock, so this new stronger conservative government had won the trust of millions. I think The government were exposed at the start of 2022, there were leaked documents and reports of a Christmas Party. The Brits were banned from Christmas parties in 2020 but the government broke their own rules. We don't know if Boris was involved fully; he claimed he didn't know he was at a party.
Then a Tennis player called Novak Djokovik was blocked from entering Australia because they thought he was careless about Pandemic safety. More people knew about the blocked tennis player than the Tonga Tsunami, something is definitely wrong here. It was like the disaster was blotted out from people's awareness.