Making the virus extinct is unlikely, but that's more than required to return life to "normal". What's required would be for its annual death toll to drop out of the top 10, such that it looks more like the kinds of ordinary ways people die at random (car crashes, cancer, etc.) and less like taking unnecessary risks.
A decent vaccine (say, 80%+ effective) would lower the transmission rates enough for that. People in high-risk groups may continue to wear masks for the rest of their lives, along with other real changes, but most people could treat their lives as "normal".
The odds of that are very good. There are multiple vaccines in process, with good reason to expect them to work, and preliminary evidence that they work fairly well. That may not suffice to eliminate the virus, but it's good enough for people to stop building their lives around it.
A decent vaccine (say, 80%+ effective) would lower the transmission rates enough for that. People in high-risk groups may continue to wear masks for the rest of their lives, along with other real changes, but most people could treat their lives as "normal".
The odds of that are very good. There are multiple vaccines in process, with good reason to expect them to work, and preliminary evidence that they work fairly well. That may not suffice to eliminate the virus, but it's good enough for people to stop building their lives around it.