I keep seeing people assume that COVID won't be under control until there's a vaccine. That doesn't have to be true. Several countries have brought their outbreaks under control already and a bunch of others are on track using conventional public health techniques.

An effective testing and tracing regime can bring a disease like COVID under control (e.g. few enough daily cases that most people can ignore the disease) in a few months. A vaccine will take a year at least, probably longer.

It is possible that the US has too dysfunctional a political culture to do what Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, Austria, etc. have done or are doing. But if so people should clearly understand that that's the problem.