Australian here. It didn’t “ultimately fail”, it partially succeeded. The practical point of lockdown wasn’t a vain attempt to eradicate the virus. It was to buy the population time for vaccines to get tested, manufactured and injected. The statistics leave no room for doubt that thousands of deaths were avoided as a result. The only question is whether the lives saved was sufficient to justify the economic, social, and psychological consequences. Good arguments be made both ways.

Wasn’t Sweden's excess mortality over the whole period smaller than Australia's though? And smaller than most of the lockdown-happy countries as well.