"essentially nobody other than the absolute political fringes of society is going to complain"

I very much dont think that is the way this plays out in the western world.

In China, they welded the doors shut on entire residential buildings leaving the people in there to either die or survive on their own. They bagged and gagged people with elevated temperature and force quarantined them. They had crematoriums working over time.

China has complete military control of their population, this is going to go very differently in the West.

China's process was very effective and probably greatly reduced the rate of infection but there is no way people in other countries are just going to sit silently while the same actions are carried out.