Why does everyone seem to think the economy would be fine without lockdowns? You think that the entire population would've continued just headed to restaurants while hospitals declared "not accepting patients anymore" and refrigerator trucks stacked up outside nursing homes?

What actually happened in stupid countries is that they reacted too late, too lightly, and everyone's been complaining that "oh the cost was too high". It takes a lockdown of ONE month, enforced strictly, to clear out COVID from the population and resume effectively normal activity (you still need to limit international passenger travel but that's proportionally far simpler).