This goes back to safe practice. Protect the elderly, the sick and the people of high risk. Everyone else can go about their business, while practicing safe habits. Keep the hospitalizations down, increase testing even more, and continue to develop treatment strategies. It can work if we do it right.
Keeping everyone at home is not the answer.
Only problem with that is that you can't necessarily "protect" the elderly. They can't be completely isolated. They need groceries or food delivery. They need medication and/or medical treatments. The ones in nursing homes are being cared for by people who are out in the environment, and one antigen test that is either too early to be detected or a false negative, and you have an outbreak in a nursing home.
I agree that "locking everyone at home" is not the answer. But IMHO neither is "everyone other than the old and vulnerable go back to normal and reach herd immunity quickly" the answer.
The question is
Is the virus becoming weaker
Possibly, but we have no evidence of it at this time.
or is it the younger folks thats making up the increase
Almost certainly yes. So that will help keep the apparent mortality rate down.
or is it the improved treatment drugs and methods that is the reason deaths are not increasing at the same rate as new cases are
Almost certainly yes, and having an effect that is keeping the apparent mortality rate down.
or will there be a huge catchup in deaths in the next few weeks
We're already seeing the catchup starting. 7-day MA of daily deaths had been stable around 700-725/day while the cases were stable in the low 40K range. In the last 10 days it has now jumped to 842/day and there's nothing logically that would give us reason to believe the increase will stop.
If you had to ask my guess, I think the apparent mortality rate will be similar to the Jul/Aug spike. I think the demographics of that spike will prove to be
mostly similar to this, but I think we'll have more older and more vulnerable people represented due to COVID fatigue. I think treatments are worlds better than the Mar/Apr spike, but probably only marginally better than the Jul/Aug spike. I wouldn't be shocked at all if those two things mostly balance out and we end up with similar apparent mortality numbers.