In regards zero covid, the 'zero covid until vaccine uptake reaches a certain level' was adopted in some other countries too, we arent stuck with only Chinas version of zero covid (featuring zero workable exit strategy so far) as a real world example. New Zealand and Australia are examples where they came to terms with an exit strategy that involved a certain amount of death later on.
As for lockdowns, theres not much new that would make a discussion about this any deeper now than it would have been a number of years ago.
And it wasnt just a question of needing lockdowns early on, they were needed for subsequent waves pre-vaccine too. UK attempts to dodge this reality without a sufficient replacement only led to a longer winter lockdown in the end.
Ways to avoid lockdowns and other restrictive responses, roughly in sequential order:
Stop the new virus getting into humans in the first place, by reducing the risks from animal-human interfaces and also to cover all bases things should be done to reduce the risk of lab accidents.
If you fail to do that, then at least have systems that offer a better chance of detecting the outbreak early, and limiting the human to human spread at or near ground zero. If that fails too, then at least have systems to stop it spreading rapidly around the entire country, and then around the entire globe.
If all those lines of defence fail then at least do stuff that slows down the spread and buys more time. Including having the ability to test way more people from an earlier stage. Put pressure on authorities not to get stuck behind the curve at every single step during the crucial early period.
If all of that fails then you still dont end up with lockdowns in every single pandemic, that level of response has tended to be the exception not the rule. Because the strength of response required depends on properties of the virus including its transmissibility, uniqueness of symptoms, what rate of hospitalisation and death it causes, age-risk profile, whether any treatments and vaccines are available, and what sort of hospital capacity a particular country has. Then depending on how all those things balance out, there might be plenty of room to deal with the issue via standard health responses, pharmaceutical methods etc. Work is being done on a broad influenza vaccine that it is hoped will offer protection against a bunch of strains that have future pandemic potential, to give one pharmaceutical example of something that can change the equations in some scenarios without people having to resort to lockdowns.
If things are still considered a close thing, with margins that are too tight to call with high confidence, then you do all you can to buy time every step of the way, increasing the chances of success, and give the masses the right information and the right impression of the situation so that they can voluntarily make some changes to behaviour early on rather than falling for inappropriate reassurances from the authorities. Ultimately there are a whole range of non-pharmaceutical interventions, lockdowns and closures of things are at one end of the spectrum of these non-pharmaceutical interventions and if the numbers add up better then you wont find authorities feeling the need to go as far as closures and lockdowns. And if authorities get too far out of step with basic reality, a fair chunk of the population will take matters into their own hands.
This virus was a bad one and many mistakes were made. If a virus with similar potential to cause severe illness etc came along in future, and authorities made the same sort of mistakes, and we didnt have treatments or vaccines or a wonderful new quantity of spare healthcare capacity or a big difference to the underlying health of our populations, then we would end up in a similar position and very strong responses would be required again. We could fiddle with some of the detail of restrictions and decent timing of a strong response could help, eg act early to reduce size of outbreak in the first place thus making periods of lockdown shorter, but the basic hospitalisations numbers game would still be where the action was, would still lead to trigger points where tough shit was required if certain levels were breached. There are a whole bunch of factors which affect quite how much wiggle room particular countries end up with, and quite how far they have to go with restrictions. When we get into this level of detail and variations between nation, the blanket term lockdown may be too simplistic to do the detail justice. And there can be infinite quibbling to suit some peoples preferences for avoiding certain actions, for choosing to believe what they feel like in regards how much good masks and lockdowns etc do, but that sort of discussion doesnt usually lead to useful alternative choices that UK authorities could actually rely on if we faced a similar virus threat in future.
People learning the obvious via the experience of this pandemic, that lockdowns were not much fun and have downsides really does not change the fundamentals. Not unless people are proposing that we develop new lower standards in regards peoples expectations of being able to receive healthcare at all during a pandemic of this sort, as opposed to being overtly sacrificed. And even when such cold calculations are made use of, the UK demonstrated that there are still limits to how far such a thing can be pushed, they still ended up having to go much further with restrictions than they originally had the appetite for. Even with their heavy handed use of rather cold calculations in the early months they still couldnt make the numbers add up. Because this particular virus sucks too much and we were starting from almost nothing in terms of pharmaceutical options, and because they resisted doing various tough but sensible things at the earliest opportunities, compounding our plight.
Being able to reduce spread of the virus in care homes, reduce the spread in hospitals, and being able to genuinely shield the most vulnerable can affect the equations and buy more wiggle room that could alter the balance to the extent that you then dont have to go so far with measures in other settings and other aspects of peoples lives. These things are tricky to achieve though, and likely require us and authorities to adopt a different sense of priorities as a nation during normal times, and there appears to be a lack of appetite to bother.
which might er...complicate the picture at some point if it starts to spread to humans 
nebraskaexaminer.com
www.theguardian.com
( which sends the message to the protestors that they can make them change policy 
)
