My aunt, grandfather, and other relatives live in Shenzhen. Just a few days ago their apartment complex got quarantined due to a covid case. No one can get in or out and my aunt actually got separated from the rest of the household because of it, she’s sleeping at her workplace, which has beds and accommodations.

Is it perfect? No. It’s very stressful for the people affected. There have been issues with people running out of food because they can’t go out and buy more, even a few cases of people who were sick with other conditions dying because they couldn’t get treatment, which raised pretty major controversy in China. Unsure exactly how common these issues are though. It could be a major problem or just a few freak cases, I haven’t really found data on it.

Last I heard they’re trying things like autonomous delivery robots that traverse quarantine zones in a number of efforts to address these problems.

This is my opinion, which, I don’t live there and have never experienced it so make of it what you will, but while the strict and aggressive quarantine system in China definitely has its issues, it’s way better than the West’s do-nothing approach, especially in the long run. This part isn’t opinion though: this practice has almost certainly saved far more lives from covid than it has negatively affected or in some cases killed, especially considering just how fast covid spreads if unmitigated in cities as dense as in China.