My guess is that it will be the same thing like swine flu 10 years ago. The media will print out a sensationalized number, and the real numbers will end up being 10x fewer when calculated honestly.
It's been 7 weeks since the Imperial College model that predicted up to 2.2 million deaths in the US, that used an infection fatality rate of 0.9% as an assumption. The best science still has us in the 0.5% to 1% range for IFR, still putting us in the 1-2 million range if let ourselves get to herd immunity levels without a vaccine.
I think we'll avoid getting to 1-2 million, but it'll be because we take actions along the way to push some/most infections to post-vaccine or post-effective treatments.
> Try to reach it without a vaccine, and millions will die.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/sunday/coronaviru...
And of course we will get herd immunity soon, with the way exponentials work. We are re-opening the economy! We will reach herd immunity far quicker than we will get a vaccine.
2) New York City has lost .2% of their entire population to get to that ~20% number. Extrapolated out, that's once again back to the 1-2 million deaths range for the country to hit herd immunity.