Because it was always the case that lockdowns cause economic slowdown and damage to established supply chains. The point was supposed to not let the virus have a chance to mutate into what it is now and sort of put things on pause, but we fucked it up and now zero covid is de facto non viable because people do in fact need to work for things to be produced and we can't pause the entire world for three years because we're still recovering from the half-assed lockdowns that didn't last long enough nor were they strict enough to help with covid but did fuck up economic status quo

The point was for the government to manage the emergency and wait for the virus to die down but instead they prioritized the health of corporations