In my understanding at the time the lockdowns were strictly for reducing the spread of the virus to the point that the hospitalization rate didn't exceed our hospital beds. The lockdowns in Washington State were very effective at limiting the pressure on hospital resources early in the pandemic to the degree that the Army withdrew their temporary field hospital in Seattle and the hospital ship the Navy had originally stationed in Seattle was moved to California where the lockdowns weren't as widely followed. The two hospitals were stationed in March and withdrawn by May or June as I recall. And we wouldn't see any further backup in Washington for the rest of the pandemic.
Another thing that gets missed in these discussions is that Washington State was following the best data that they had, and you could watch it on the Department of Health's website. When cases started trending upwards they would wait for the hospitalization rate to trend upward and the bed count to reach a certain point and then ratchet down on the controls. When the trends reversed and fell below a certain point they would loosen the controls. It was very predictable what would happen next if you watched the DOH's website.
There was also a very gradual decoupling of the hospitalization rate from the case rate the first summer vaccinations were widespread, and that seemed to demonstrate that as a public health measure vaccination was very effective.
A seldom expressed idea is that maybe we acted close to optimally throughout this whole thing. I hesitated to write that, because I know someone will bring up a case where an official lied or there was widespread corruption (and I still welcome such arguments)...
But, some mistakes pushed us towards too much lock-down, and some mistakes pushed us towards too little lock-down, and perhaps they balanced out to something close to optimal. Not only in the case of lock-downs, but in other things too: surely some executive acted with primary concern for profits, and surely some others spread baseless anti-vax conspiracies. Maybe they balance out?
Maybe society is like a huge machine learning model. It has many errors, sometimes it estimates too high, sometimes it estimates too low. We are always striving to correct both types of errors, but the errors do not stop us from finding an approximate middle path which is often good enough.
Health policy aside, we clearly stimulated too much, but if you look at what the administration and lawmakers were saying back then they said things like "we'd rather err on the side of too much stimulus rather than too little," a sentiment that I think most people agreed with at the time, and, well, that's what we got.
Another thing that gets missed in these discussions is that Washington State was following the best data that they had, and you could watch it on the Department of Health's website. When cases started trending upwards they would wait for the hospitalization rate to trend upward and the bed count to reach a certain point and then ratchet down on the controls. When the trends reversed and fell below a certain point they would loosen the controls. It was very predictable what would happen next if you watched the DOH's website.
There was also a very gradual decoupling of the hospitalization rate from the case rate the first summer vaccinations were widespread, and that seemed to demonstrate that as a public health measure vaccination was very effective.