That literally makes no difference at all. You’ll just vendor the malicious versions. No, a lock file with only exact versions is the safe path here. We haven’t seen a compromise to existing versions that I know of, only patch/minor updates with new malicious code.
I maintain that the flexibility in npm package versions is the main issue here.
You are using the word "vendoring" differently than i do, i mean some kind of private fork of the repository.