I think they can work in the short term but fail in the long term unless you government has power and will like the Chinese government to enforce it. No one said democracy was the best version of governments in all cases, but it's the best overall option we have so we suffer through it. In the long term people will get tired of losing their houses, livelihood, etc during a very long lockdown as we see happening in Europe and the USA. Unless you have a gun pointed at them people just start ignoring it based on the premise they can't throw us all in jail.