Have you looked at Japan lately? At their peak in early January they were seeing a new case rate that was the equivalent of about 20,000 cases per day in the U.S. Still a pretty far cry from our own rate of spread, but a pretty challenging data point to the idea that "competent lockdowns" are a silver bullet. Meanwhile you can't even get a deaths count from China and their standard for a "positive test" is very different from the Western countries'.
Australia and New Zealand have been in their summer months. Being relatively isolate-able islands perhaps they will be able to keep Covid "out," but NZ did just report its first case of community spread in months as their autumn gets started.
