China literally locked down Shanghai and millions of people in their homes, had police everywhere monitoring, had almost no exceptions other than for the police, and literally boarded people in their homes, engaged every spying mechanism they had, did mandatory testing, for more than six weeks, and it did not stop COVID - but it is increasingly clear it only delayed it from spreading inevitably. Even WIRED, pro-vaccine, has written articles about all the people who died from the lockdown and inability to get medical care due to the restrictions. It was the most full, most strict lockdown physically possible and it still did not work and China is looking at needing to repeat it.