Lockdowns only cannot eliminate this coronavirus. You'd have to also eliminate the virus from bat populations, or eliminate bats, else it will jump back into humans.
The most likely outcome for this is that it becomes endemic, another variant of the common cold, like the several others that already exist.
The 1968 flu killed 1-4 million people, in a world with half as many people. This is nothing unusual, diseases happen, part of being human, shocking news headlines to the contrary.
> The first thing to remember is that we haven't been successful at eradicating many viruses at all. Really the lone exception is smallpox, but many of these viruses exist not only in the human population but in animal populations.
> And then the expectation I have is that this virus will actually become the next common cold coronavirus. What we don't know with these common cold coronaviruses is if they went through a similar transition period.
> So, say something like OC43, which is a common cold coronavirus that was originally from cows. It's been historically reported that there was an outbreak associated with the transition of this virus from cows to humans that was very severe disease, and then after a few years, the virus became just the common cold.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/09/900490301/covid-19-may-never-...