We have a growing pool of people who simply don't have the attention span to "deal with this anymore" and are going back to "regular life".
The states are all over the place right now, and will stay that way for a while.
Some have severe lockdowns, some have moderate lockdowns, some have lockdown-lite etc.
States will be slowly releasing folks through May and June.
Since there is a several week delay between gathering of crowds and CV deaths it will probably take until mid-summer for everything to hit the fan....
Since about April 3, the growth has been linear, not exponential, because of, as you point out, all the mitigation. Once that mitigation is removed... well... I'm still going to socially distance until I see what the trend turns out to be. I expect, like you do, that it will be exponential again.
what makes you think we are at 68K?