that we'll be on the way to normalcy by early spring.

The last 7-day average we have is 168K cases per day (from Saturday). If we assume we're detecting 25% of infections, that means 1.4% of the U.S. population is being infected each week. That rate is growing, and we haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving and Christmas yet. That means that in the 10 weeks between now and the end of January, when the first wave of the vaccine is getting second doses, we could easily see another 15-20% of the population infected.

At our current estimate of transmission rates at about 1.2 nationally, removing that much of the population from the susceptible pool should be enough to drop transmission rates below 1 in almost every state at current behavior patterns, even before you factor in a vaccine. Every week that passes after that, more people will get vaccinated, and there will be fewer cases left to infect new people (and weather effects will also stop working against us). Exponential decay should mean that every week in February and March, not only will the transmission rate drop, but the amount the rate will drop should be accelerating.

The fine print, of course, is that this will be paid for with many thousands of deaths over the winter.