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Bottom line, the area under the curve is going to remain the same.  The steps we take to reduce transmission are delaying tactics, nothing more and nothing less.  Europe didn't exhaust their area under the curve in the first wave, and it's back.  There's just no stopping it, the science of the virology is inevitable.

There is value in those delaying tactics though, especially if we can manage to produce an effective vaccine that moves us closer to herd immunity and actually diminishes the area under the curve.

But if no effective vaccine is produced, then the area under the curve remains the same, and the world can't sustain the same level of shut-down as it currently is, forever.  Beyond the devastating economic implications, the much longer-term aspects of mental health, productive education, and dozens of other factors, dictate that we'll end up doing more harm than good, with continued shutdowns/distancing.

Yes, lockdowns are incapable of completely shutting down this virus. It's too transmissible that any enforceable lockdown (i.e. not declaring martial law and shooting anyone caught outside their home without authorization) could not get the R0 numbers down to a level where the virus would completely be eradicated. 

But IMHO the value in trying to delay and mitigate the spread as much as possible in the hopes that we do get a vaccine, and it seems promising so far, is significant. People who suggest "we should seek natural herd immunity" IMHO don't realize that the death toll of doing that would be massive. 

If there will never be an effective vaccine, then our best bet is to try to reach herd immunity naturally, but slowly enough that we don't overwhelm the healthcare system and people are dying due to lack of access to treatment. But natural herd immunity should be the fallback when we find out everything else has failed. 

Yes, lockdowns are incapable of completely shutting down this virus. It's too transmissible that any enforceable lockdown (i.e. not declaring martial law and shooting anyone caught outside their home without authorization) could not get the R0 numbers down to a level where the virus would completely be eradicated.

But IMHO the value in trying to delay and mitigate the spread as much as possible in the hopes that we do get a vaccine, and it seems promising so far, is significant. People who suggest "we should seek natural herd immunity" IMHO don't realize that the death toll of doing that would be massive.

If there will never be an effective vaccine, then our best bet is to try to reach herd immunity naturally, but slowly enough that we don't overwhelm the healthcare system and people are dying due to lack of access to treatment. But natural herd immunity should be the fallback when we find out everything else has failed.

I agree with all of this-- I just think we're fast approaching the end of the line on how long we can continue our delaying tactics.  We clearly can't wait the 2-3 years a normal vaccine takes to produce.   We're almost 8 months into this for most of the country, and 9-10 months into it for the parts of the world that were hit hardest, early.  Anything beyond a year, any projections of lockdowns beyond next spring, are a complete no-go.

So we have 4-5 months to produce and distribute an effective vaccine.  That's about it, really.

Some good thoughts in this thread, including the hypothesis that it is mutating slightly into variations that drift to more potent, and less potent, over time.

I think "we" are taking sensible precautions here now, I can't think of anything else I would suggest doing.  This state at least is holding the line for now, that could easily rise of course in a week or so, which worries me.  Holidays may send the numbers up, one contagious person in a group of 20 ...

I agree with all of this-- I just think we're fast approaching the end of the line on how long we can continue our delaying tactics.  We clearly can't wait the 2-3 years a normal vaccine takes to produce.  We're almost 8 months into this for most of the country, and 9-10 months into it for the parts of the world that were hit hardest, early.  Anything beyond a year, any projections of lockdowns beyond next spring, are a complete no-go.

So we have 4-5 months to produce and distribute an effective vaccine.  That's about it, really.

Bear in mind that our current "lockdowns" are nothing even remotely like what we saw in March/April/June. Even here in a place like California where we're probably more restrictive than most. 

And if there is a major weather-related spike, it might actually move the numbers enough to reawaken people that this isn't going away and they need to be more vigilant.

But I agree, if we don't have a vaccine by the spring, people are just going to give up on most of their behavior modification. 

We walked over four miles today, nearly everyone is being "sensible", the Beltline was pretty crowded for a week day.  We went to Ponce City Market, the repurposed old Sears building that was revived successfully, and it was fairly depressing, a lot of places had closed down.  More than half were still there, so there is some good news.  It was somewhat busy, again, weekdays are usually light there, weekends back before C were crowded.

Two larger restaurants were permanently closed.  I hate the disruption this has caused.  This had been a popular kind of cool place.

https://poncecitymarket.com/

Yeah, it's still quite warm here of course, but cold is coming.  Some places have plastic curtains they drop around the patios and heat the insides.

We're doing what we can.

This is the biggest problem we have right now, in my mind.

The Illinois governor just locked down bars and restaurants in several counties again today. Some of them have already announced permanent closure.

ALREADY.

No indoor dining = no customers. It's too cold to sit outside now, so those owners are screwed, along their employees and suppliers.

We need to learn to live with this thing and not let the cure be worse than the cause. It's depressing.

A huge number of restaurants in Austin have patios, outdoor dining is the norm, so that helps.  And almost anyone with outdoor dining, has outdoor heaters and plastic screening to improve warmth, which covers everything but the very coldest few days in the heart of winter.  Honestly, here, the summer is worse than the Fall/Winter/Spring for outdoor dining, because there's just no good way to cool off a patio when it's 105 degrees outside. 

But the bars-- they're pretty much toast.  Back in June, the local fishwrap published a story that 90% of bars would be permanently closed by the end of the year, if restrictions remained in place.  I'd say we're about halfway there, with no realistic end in sight.  25 or 50% capacity just isn't going to cut it for them.  And the large festivals like ACL Fest in October, and SXSW that was canceled last March, drive a ton of their revenue.  In a business where margins are thin, some places can ONLY turn an annual profit based on income they get from those two weeks.  Sort of the way retail stores are pretty much in the red all year, and make their annual profits at Christmas.

But there's an important key to remember. The fact that restaurants or bars CAN be open doesn't mean that they're going to get customers showing up. 

Bars and restaurants base their ability to stay afloat partially on a certain occupancy level, and even if every state and locality completely eliminated their restrictions, I would guess that those bars and restaurants wouldn't hit those occupancy levels because people are trying to be safe. 

Here in California, I don't care whether they open up indoor dining or not; I have no intent on going to eat indoor in a restaurant. A few weeks back I had a day off so my wife took a day off and we did a Friday date lunch. The restaurant said when she made the reservation that they couldn't guarantee outdoor seating, and my wife told them "that's fine but if there aren't tables outside when we get there we'll go somewhere else." 

A lot of people are like us; they aren't going for indoor dining anywhere. A lot of people may go for indoor dining, but are trying to keep their nights dining out to a minimum or only for very special occasion due to the risk. A lot of people who may have paired indoor dining with other date events (movies, concerts, theater) don't have those other events to go to, so they're not going to go to a restaurant. 

None of this requires that people stay home 100% of the time, but if every person that normally would go out X amount of times per month are only going out to eat 25% of X per month, it kills the restaurants anyway. 

As I've said before, this is going to be a shit sandwich for restaurants and bars regardless of what we do regarding government-mandated lockdowns or occupancy limits. Because I believe that enough people are changing their behavior voluntarily that many of them will go under regardless of what the government says. It'll be blamed on lockdowns, of course. But that doesn't mean that they would have been full if there were no lockdowns in the middle of a pandemic.