One thing to consider is that the lockdowns did have an effect on the transmission and death rates. They may have been overblown, but the resulting rates themselves don't tell us that, since they're affected directly by the lockdowns. Chicken and egg.... not as simple as the example given above.

For example, if a country locked down completely and had 0 deaths, one could conclude that the lockdown had been totally pointless, since there were no deaths. But I think we can see that doesn't necessarily make sense.

I have a few mates in Australia (as we likely all do). They tell me it was overblown. Like 1 death in a province, some guy from overseas who came as a refugee and died, and the whole province was locked down for a month. Silliness.

Also, I don't think "case" numbers matter much. That's totally political. If you slow down testing, cases seem to drop. If you speed up testing, cases seem to surge. Almost totally ignorable data. It's deaths that have some semblance of alignment with reality.