It seems to me that we handled COVID better than some places. We did the lockdowns, closed the restaurants but kept essential businesses going, and we learned about social distancing and how disease spreads.
We prevented thousands of deaths, maybe even a million. Then once we figured out ways to combat the diseas and vaccines came out, we ended all the lockdowns. In many ways, we threaded the needle and did things the right way. We came together as a nation to fight a deadly disease. The people who were against the lockdowns were useful for helping us figure out when to end it, but they are wrong that it shouldn't have been done in the first place.
We had a lot more deaths than China early on, but we may be better prepared to handle COVID and other deadly diseases in the future.