It's hard to see any other course of action when we saw what was happening in Northern Italy. In fact if anything I would say most Western countries didn't lock down early or hard enough.
Countries that ease the lockdown before they have a handle on the virus are in for a lot of pain further down the road. Probably more economic damage as well.
As an example, 9 million people die each year due to hunger or hunger-related issues, many of them children. 135 million face food insecurity. Due to lockdowns and recession, the World Food Program estimates the toll will double this year. And hunger is just one cause of death that a recession can lead to (suicides, substance abuse, etc).
Lockdowns might save lives, and I can't blame public health officials for protecting their community, but I personally fear more lives will be lost due to economic costs. They just might be poorer, quieter lives. And while death is, of course, final, suffering in life should count for something too.
https://www.wfp.org/news/covid-19-will-double-number-people-...
That's a real issue in the developing world; in the developed world the resources exist to buffer the temporary additional low-end economic impact; not doing so effectively is a policy choice (and, in practice, a deliberate active one made when the alternative of providing the aid is presented), not an inherent corollary of lockdowns.
That seems like a pretty sterile way to describe it.
Right now, in the (presumably) developed US, 1 in 5 children don't have enough food, 3x the amount during 2008. That's a result of years of policy choices, but one particularly policy choice caused it to spike. If there's a resource buffer, it's not buffering.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the-covid...