Comment by noirscape

The reality is that COVID caused lockdowns never had anything to do with the lethality rate. It had everything to do with hospital pressure - there's a limited number of ICU beds and COVID was the annoying combination of spreading easiliy and if it went bad, you'd occupy a bed in the ICU since you needed very active monitoring. If ICU capacity is exceeded, you get into the really ugly business of having to triage who can get necessary first aid. Governments and hospitals both would really do anything else than have to decide whether or not you leave the weak and elderly to die of diseases because you lack the space to handle them. (Not to mention the personnel shortage; a lot of other medical procedures got delayed because of ICU pressure. Even if they did have enough beds, that wouldn't necessarily translate to enough people to care for patients, and you'd end up having to triage non-COVID procedures too.)

That is what caused the lockdowns. It's also why after the first two vaccine waves, the pressure on hospitals was heavily relieved, leading to most countries lifting their lockdowns. Even just being vaccinated once gives you enough immunity against COVID to usually not need a hospital visit. The disadvantages of a lockdown even on just a healthcare level outweigh the benefits when you don't have a dangerous superspreader on your hands.

Mental problems were up massively during the lockdown period since humans are social creatures; physically there also were major spikes in seasonal diseases for the next year since they never stopped evolving, while we stopped getting them, meaning our bodies didn't have the time to adapt to them... So we got all the seasonal diseases thrown at us at once.