We're not doomed.
That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of difficulty ahead, though. We appear to be past the point where contact tracing - even if there were will at the national level to make the necessary investments - can drive the infection rate down the way some nations have achieved. If enough people practice social distancing and wear masks, we may well be able to keep the rate of spread to rates that our hospital system can handle.
We'll clearly have a subset of the population that will not effectively distance or mask - whether because they have ideological objections, or believe they're invincible, or just don't understand, or care. We're not going to compel compliance (whether we should or not is another issue, but we're not going to). So we're going to continue to see new cases. If immunity after infection (or eventually, after vaccination) is long-lasting, we'll eventually see that case rate decline. If immunity is short-lived, then we'll continue to see cases, period. Until/unless we can get to effective herd immunity, we will continue to see infections. Until/unless we can develop truly effective treatments for these infections, we'll continue to see deaths among the more vulnerable populations.
We can hope that there aren't a lot of long-term post-infection health issues that we don't know about yet. If there are, and we don't achieve the infection-stopping solutions (immunity, effective treatment), then we'll have permanently-increased death rates, and a reduction in life expectancy as a result.
Not a good outcome - well, unless you're an actuary!
