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It doesn't have to. Suppress transmission with lockdowns and quarantines until the number of cases is low. Then open up partially, with social distancing measures, mask requirements, etc. Do contact tracing with extensive testing and contact tracing to keep the virus at a low level. Use random testing to keep an eye on the level of the virus in each community. Impose stricter measures locally if you detect R > 1.

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If you have 800 000 active cases you need to reduce R very close to 0 to get rid of it in a reasonable time, just having sub 1 is not enough.

In China, it was suppressed to somewhere around 0.3. They went from nearly 4000 new confirmed cases per day in early February to about 100 new confirmed cases per day (at a much higher rate of testing) a month later. New cases are low enough now that contact tracing appears to be holding the epidemic in check.

Once you reach a low overall case count, you can ease measures to target R ~ 1.

The alternative, letting the epidemic burn through the population, means sacrificing ~0.5% of the population.

Given the steady pace of ~30k new confirmed cases per day in the US, R has not been suppressed enough. Yet governors are talking about easing restrictions...

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