Also, they lie about their numbers. Locked down population with restructed internet access and no independent media can lose 50% to an epidemy and we'll know nothing.
This is mainly aimed at avoiding uncontrolled surges and collapse of the healthcare system and is effective for that.
However, indeed, this must be 'step 1' and combined with a broader strategy of vaccination and controlled exposure to the virus otherwise you only end up with an infinite cycle of lockdowns.
One issue in China is that although their vaccines do help they are much less effective at preventing infections than, say, Pfizer and Moderna, or AZ.
You have to pretty much be willfully ignoring this fact to not understand it at this point.
To note: I'm personally vaccinated, but people who think it is OK to restrict personal freedoms of other people based on very fluid and agenda-driven narrative about the current state of the 'scientific consensus' do not get much respect from me. Maybe it is because I'm from a country where personal freedoms are routinely abused and I value them much more than people who take these freedoms for grated.
> Against the original virus BioNTech was 95% effective compared to 50.7% for Sinovac.
https://www.otandp.com/blog/covid-19-vaccine-comparison-whic...
That may be true, but you can apparently stop the spread of disease [and] collapse of the health care system without lockdowns.
Look at Sweden. Anders Tegnell was relentlessly vilified by the mainstream media since 2020, yet the non-lockdown strategy appears to have led to an "average" outcome over the long term.
The question is more whether it is a net benefit if infections surge again as soon as the lockdown is lifted. And the answer is of course that it's not black and white.