...(which I think in itself is a misnomer, because I don't think we'll ever seen things return exactly to how they were before)...is going to be a complete mess. The virus is going to spike immediately after people come out of hiding. There's no way around that. So the question has to be - are we going to take the "power through" approach and try to get through it as quickly as possible, or are we going to stay the course with this slow, agonizing strangulation. The total number of cases are likely to be equal in both scenarios...the timescale is the only variable.

I really think the strategy should be to let people in the less-vulnerable demographics have an option to go back to work, while continuing to protect the elderly and compromised/predisposed with extreme care. That should prevent a spike in critical cases beyond the healthcare system's capacity at any one point in time, while still allowing the economy to function and allowing people to stay employed and not overburden the government with unemployment claims. This hopefully would also allow the healthy population to reach "herd immunity" more quickly, which in the end would help protect the vulnerable. The more quickly the general population becomes unlikely to transmit the virus, the safer it will be for the weak/elderly/compromised.