Of course heavy and complete lockdowns are effective (at delaying the spread of the virus) - if no one is in contact with anyone else there's no way for the vir

Of course heavy and complete lockdowns are effective (at delaying the spread of the virus) - if no one is in contact with anyone else there's no way for the virus to spread. A more apt comparison would be made between countries/states with slight or "normal/average" lockdown to ones without, but that's very difficult to do in practice. And then measure the financial and societal impacts (which is also difficult/impossible).