Lockdowns work well, Sydney was just too slow to act. Look at any epidemiological model and it pretty clear new cases will be emerging for a while yet. The real solution is the vaccine of course.

But the point is that in both the long Melbourne and now Sydney lockdowns the majority of the population has been pretty happy with the approach.

In both cases there were protests, but in both cases there were equal numbers asking for the government to lock down earlier than it did.