[asdf21]

From the get go, it was estimated that 80% of the world population would be infected within 18-24 months.

All the shutdown was intended to do was to "slow the spread" from the 18 months to 24 months, and to hopefully keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Once we knew how infectious it was, Covid was always expected to infect nearly everyone eventually, whether the economy was shut down or not.

[UncleOxidant]

The Chinese military has already given the go ahead to start injecting a vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics into military personnel. That's potentially 2 million people. https://fortune.com/2020/06/29/china-coronavirus-vaccine-mil... This vaccine has already gone through their phase1&2 trials. Whereas in the US a vaccine probably won't be available for about a year, it's quite possible that other countries will follow China's lead and accelerate their vaccine development & trials.

Slowing the spread was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed (flatten the curve) but it was also to minimize the number of people infected before either a vaccine or effective treatments became available. In the US a vaccine is likely still a year off, but we already know more about how to treat this than we did 4 months ago. And in another 4 months we'll likely have even better treatments and protocols.

It's not inevitable that 80% have to be infected within 18-24 months. Other countries have slowed the spread with Hong Kong, S Korea and Taiwan being 3 of the more notable examples.