You can do reasonable steps (masks, distance, no big events) that keep the infection rate to a minimum until we can get a vaccine approved and administered to 95% of the population in 1-2 years time.

Maybe we will live with strains of the virus forever, but that's not the problem. We have many diseases among us that are harmless in childhood and much worse later in live, but they are much more harmless both because people are exposed to them starting in early childhood, allowing them to build some immunity; and because vaccination is an option. That's a much more harmless situation than the initial outbreak ripping through a population that has never seen the virus.