I understand everything that you wrote is just speculation starting from the conditional, “If COVID-19 digs in deep in the US then...” but I just don’t follow the logic.

It’s not our first pandemic. It won’t be the last. And I don’t see any reason at all to think why people won’t go back to living their lives at the first possible opportunity.

But what does “dig in deep” even mean? In the vast majority of cases it’s a mild virus with symptoms generally lasting a week.

If anything I think at the end of all this people will be deeply suspicious the next time the WHO declares a pandemic and insists we need to shut down the world economy.

We are not dealing with an exponential function. We are dealing with a logistics function, I.e. an “S” curve.

The predominant factor to coming out the other side of the curve is herd immunity.

IMO, the faster that young and middle age people acquire herd immunity, the safer it is long term for the elderly who are at the highest risk, because it drives R0 below 1 and extinguishes the pandemic.

The flaw with “flatten the curve” is overly simplistic thinking around the severity of cases. The best way to eliminate severe cases, assuming strict containment is impossible or cripplingly costly, is to gain herd immunity in the low-risk populations.