We are at a point in this pandemic where we now have a much better idea of where the hotspots are, who is getting sick and how. Lockdown was never going to be a long-term solution: only once was it ever tried before on this scale (1918), and even then it was not for this long, not as disruptive (people still went to work, sports still went on, and we were already in an abnormal economy because of the war) and it wasn't particularly effective.
We also know that this virus, while more dangerous than the flu in terms of rate of death and severe complications (especially for those with pre-existing conditions), is no more infectious over any given time span: the only reason it has a higher R0 is because it takes longer for the body to fight it off. The skyrocketing numbers we saw in the early days of the pandemic were more a byproduct of falling way behind on noticing than high infection rates. Most of the research has also shown that children are at far lower risk of transmitting it than adults, meaning all this talk about socially distant schools is foolishness.
The more we can isolate the sick as they are found, the less of a threat it becomes to the general public.
