Paul Ananth Tambyah, president of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection in Singapore, said Chinese leaders are doing what they believe is best for the Chinese people. “I think that the Chinese have seen the devastating impact of partial lockdowns and also the increased numbers of cases stretching health-care systems globally, so they may feel that it is worth giving the zero COVID strategy a chance to prove whether it is indeed possible to nip an outbreak of a virus like this in the bud.”

But economists and supply-chain experts reacted with alarm to the lockdown. “It’s going to be really bad,” Daniel Stanton, a professor of marketing at Bradley University, told Fortune. “When we’re talking about goods coming out of China, it’s not just the finished products we buy directly, but it’s also a lot of parts that are crucial to manufacturing other things that we buy, too.”

The possible impact of a citywide lockdown on supply chains is just one reason that many experts are skeptical of China’s zero-COVID approach to the pandemic. Allowing industries to remain open, with targeted restrictions such as mask and vaccine mandates, might better balance public health and economic health.