The goal of the lockdown is to contains spreads and reduce death, reduce the chance of giving the virus an open field to mutate and yield new variants. Of course it’s never going to be zero death, but their numbers fared better than even smaller nations https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

> Except there's no such thing as a zero covid, anywhere. Eventually you get covid and if you're susceptible (mainly old), you die.

Had everyone followed the New Zealand model in the first year until vaccines were widespread and available, the virus would have gotten extinct just as Influenza Yamagata strain.