I'm uncertain about a lot of things re: what will happen in the US on COVID. But some of the models show the chance of a long plateau... i.e. once we get down to ~1,000 deaths/day, we might stay there for a while. That seems plausible to me. https://covid19-projections.com/ 

How could you get there? If states are willing to maintain enough social distancing to prevent R from being >1, but not more. So they'll try to prevent *increases*, but they'll tolerate plateaus. Some states (e.g. NY) explicitly have a policy of trying to keep R <=1, in fact.

Of course, because there are lags between policy and behavioral changes and the data, there's the risk of miscalculation. You think you're managing R to 1 but ... oops, turns out it's 1.5! The risk I worry most about comes in the fall if there are strong weather-related effects.