I started hearing about this back in January.  Taking the stats from China it was looking even way worse than 1%.  It was looking more like 10%. I don't think starting the lockdown was a mistake; we had no idea what we were dealing with and this was looking horrible.  But we went from "flatten the curve until we were sure we wouldn't overwhelm hospitals" to "flatten the curve until the disease can't spread at all, or we have a vaccine"; and everyone ignored that the flatter you made the curve the longer you made it, too. Starting the lockdown wasn't a mistake.  Keeping things locked down, to this extent, for so long, definitely was.