1000 people in America are dying every day from Covid-19.
It's down to about 950 over this past week.
Because even basic measures -- especially mask wearing -- mostly complied with has a positive effect and reduces transmission. Of course if serious measures were taken early (lets say March) and complied with to a large degree, the virus would be basically gone and businesses and life would be largely back to normal (with the exception of large gatherings). How do I know that? That's what I've lived through.
Jan 21 China locked down. By March 21 we were allowed to play basketball at some gyms, just with a temp check on the way in for two weeks, and the first week leaving your name and phone number for contact tracing. A gradual reopening went on in stages in April and May. Precautions continued in June, such as mask wearing and companies encouraged to let employees work at home if possible. July and August have been totally back to normal. The only place I wear a mask, or need to, is when I visit my doctor friends at the hospital.
It's been roughly 3 months of normal here; the last two you'd hardly know there had been a pandemic. Maybe 20% of people still wear masks. Though on the street, most mask wearers have them down on their chin. It's become cool to have a face mask wrapped around your upper arm like an armband, in case you need it -- I think the subway and buses still require masks.
No reason the US couldn't have been on the same schedule as China, just a month or two later. If strict careful measures were in place by March 21, June and July would have seen staged reopenings and everything would have been normal by August. And there'd be no virus to speak of for school openings. Should have happened that way... All it would have taken is American wearing face masks for 8-20 weeks to avoid 6 months of epidemic and hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions infected ....