> If the suppression is effective

Comparing places that didn't lock down to those that did I think its fair to say that the strategy has not been effective.

Where people weren’t constantly battling the decisions, lockdowns were quite effective. The problem is that without a very strict but short lockdown you will get into this semi-lockdown that is hardly effective and thus just prolongs everything. But the answer never is “just do whatever you want”.

No they weren't we have had close to a year of them here in Spain, and the first few months were ridiculously strict.