Each city is its own region — we have gone back to school for 6 weeks in my city — no increase in numbers, no surge, hospitals emptying out.
I think what is not being taken into account is the cross productivity of other (previous) corona infections. My guess is and the literature seems to support it that by having T-cell immunity to corona genus, that it significantly reduces the amount of infection to achieve a herd
Of course this will all be moot in about 6 weeks when vaccination is available,
I think Jan 1 we will be wide open as people will choose to get vaccinated and back to life.
Certainly the population centers have their own dynamics in terms of how disease is able to spread, based on the layout, culture, density, etc. My only concern is in expressing a conclusion that the reason for a positive shift in numbers is reaching herd immunity, since that has some finality to it and the risk is that if there’s another jump later, it looks like something is terribly wrong (e.g. either there’s no such thing as herd immunity for this or we just don’t understand it).
I do share your optimism about the vaccines though. It seems as though several are moving closer to the end of clinical trials. I’ve been a little surprised at how long the FDA has held up Oxford’s candidate, but I trust that they’re just being thorough and honestly that’s what I expect and hope to see from the FDA. I’m thankful for their caution. Moderna says they’ll have 20 million doses by year’s end. If we can get a few others with similar amounts or more, we should be in pretty decent shape to see a sharp decline in numbers across the board. That would be hugely helpful. Consumer confidence is a major part of the economic engine, so we need people going out and releasing all the pent-up demand for spending.