[UncleOxidant]

The Chinese military has already given the go ahead to start injecting a vaccine developed by CanSino Biologics into military personnel. That's potentially 2 million people. https://fortune.com/2020/06/29/china-coronavirus-vaccine-mil... This vaccine has already gone through their phase1&2 trials. Whereas in the US a vaccine probably won't be available for about a year, it's quite possible that other countries will follow China's lead and accelerate their vaccine development & trials.

Slowing the spread was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed (flatten the curve) but it was also to minimize the number of people infected before either a vaccine or effective treatments became available. In the US a vaccine is likely still a year off, but we already know more about how to treat this than we did 4 months ago. And in another 4 months we'll likely have even better treatments and protocols.

It's not inevitable that 80% have to be infected within 18-24 months. Other countries have slowed the spread with Hong Kong, S Korea and Taiwan being 3 of the more notable examples.