Seems like Upper Midwest is approaching herd immunity, especially in the Dakotas. Wisconsin and Minnesota are showing improvement as well. Even if there's no vaccine, the virus will just burn itself out eventually, lockdowns are just prolonging the inevitable.
Hospitalization numbers are starting to plateau and decline. a lot of nursing home residents and seniors are being vaccinated and this should help the numbers along with herd immunity with more than a third of the country already infected.
600K+ dead is already baked in and nothing can be done about that at this point but hopefully by April and May with seasonal change and half the country infected or vaccinated cases will be in steep decline.
The only wild card are the new UK and Brazil strains which may evade the vaccine and cause reinfection among those who already had COVID.
Burn itself out, just like smallpox. Centuries upon centuries.
In my region (Mid-South) the health care system has not broken, but is under serious strain. For example, my Mom was recently discharged from the hospital (non-COVID problem.) She got shipped off to a hospital an extra hour away. Normally her hospital would handle it, but, all their GI specialists have been consolidated at the more distant hospital — which is not even part of the same hospital group as Mom’s local hospital. Then... when discharged she was instructed to make a follow up appt. with her PCP in a week. No way, Hose! 2-1/2 weeks at best, and that was after considerable pleading to get it under 3-1/2 weeks.
NORMALLY if Mom has an urgent (but not emergency) problem, her PCP (actually the PCP’s head nurse) will get Mom fit in in a few days.