The alternative is pretty crummy, unless we get very lucky with a vaccine-- it basically requires permanent restrictions.

If you can get the infection rate down enough so it doesn't overwhelm your ability to do testing and contact tracing you can relax restrictions.

A little, but not anything close to what we consider normalcy. And you get to maintain them forever, or until a vaccine arrives.

Of course, our case count is so high right now. If you get Rt down to a miraculous 0.5, it's like 180 days before you can get to the point where contact tracing is effective. And you probably don't achieve an Rt of 0.5.