They are self-consistent if “unthinkable totalitarian measures” didn’t work, and the Chinese government has switched to a mitigation strategy without informing the populace.
If you think that people being locked up in their apartments for a month would result in the same transmission rates as people going about their lives freely, I don't know what to tell you: apart from all the other fantastic properties people have imagined SARS-CoV-2 to have, it also apparently can magically infect people who don't have contact with it.
