At least in Europe we never had a lockdown comparable to the Shanghai lockdown. People always could go to get food, medicine and get to work. The highest level of lockdown was that in-door and outdoor meeting in private were restricted somewhat (in Germany you could only walk with a single person from another household but couldn't sit down on a park bench).

I think western democracies had a much more commensurate approach to Covid even though they failed in protecting the nursing home population.