The title of the piece is "‘It is much worse this time’: India’s devastating second wave". Given that the discussion is of the exponential increases in both cases and deaths, it seems clear that the "it" in the title refers to "the pandemic", not "life in general".
My response followed this interpretation, despite the wording of your questions - clearly I should have been more explicit: "How would the lockdowns have made the pandemic worse?"
I do not say that the lockdowns make the pandemic worse, I say that the lockdowns make life of people worse. The mass media are making a great confusion, between "pandemic" and "life in general", and so do people, and that's what I am specifically criticizing.
You are certainly right, the lockdowns do make the lives of most people worse, some significantly more so than others.
The pandemic, however, directly threatens people's lives. There have been 33,815 confirmed covid deaths in India since the start of the year, and 3 million around the world since the beginning of the pandemic. I think it is unrealistic to suggest that there have been anything remotely like that number attributable to lockdown over those timeframes.
