According to a pandemic expert at Texas A&M the coronavirus outbreak will have five stages.
Bad news: we're only in stage two right now.
The first phase is containment. That’s when we try to keep the virus from entering our area and try to keep it from spreading in the community.
So we transitioned from Phase One, containment, to Phase Two, mitigation. We are clearly in the mitigation phase now.
Phase Three would be (a second stage of) containment before we have a vaccine to deploy. I’m optimistic that in three to six months we’ll have (a better treatment for coronavirus symptoms), a therapeutic in our toolkit that can rescue those who become severely ill.
Phase Four is (a third stage of) containment once we have a vaccine.
We're going to get into a situation like we're used to with seasonal flu, because I don't think COVID is going away. In fact, I think we should anticipate that we're going to have a second wave in in the fall.
Phase Five: Making preparation for the next pandemic a national security priority.
Unfortunately, we've entered a period where emerging infectious diseases are increasing with alarming frequency. Go back to the first coronavirus: Recall the major problems with SARS in 2000 to 2003. That was supposed to be a wake-up call for the world to be ready for these things.