All lockdown does is suppress the virus. That is widely acknowledged.
We’ve managed to suppress it till winter - great result! Now it will come back at a time when we’re vulnerable to flu.... unless we suppress it again for a bit. So, up we get for a cycle of lockdown, release, more lockdown, and on and on, fucking our economy. Destroying the thing that pays for our schools, our hospitals, our pensions, our social workers, our elderly care, our roads...
We can’t afford lockdown. If pursued the inevitable cycle of lockdowns, potentially for years, will utterly destroy our country.
This highly unpleasant virus will kill the elderly and vulnerable unless they self isolate. That’s all we can do. The vulnerable & elderly self isolate and the rest of society carry on. If you don’t like it, blame the Chinese government who failed to crack down on wet markets despite knowing the risk.
So no, if the test of lockdown ‘working’ is whether it is a sustainable, proportionate policy tool that gets effective long term results - lockdown does not work. It just (at best) temporarily conceals the problem, at a huge cost. It’s the political equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting ‘la la la I’m not listening’ and hoping that makes the problem go away.