Opinion: Through prevention, we can calm the COVID-19 waves

The COVID-19 pandemic appears once again to be waning, as daily case counts, hospitalizations and thankfully, even deaths have been declining in recent weeks. But the virus has come back before, and the likelihood remains strong that it will return again, as soon as this fall or winter. Looking at the case count on a graph is like looking at waves at the beach. Some waves are smaller, some are bigger, and some are huge. But the waves do not go away completely. The daily average of new cases in the United States on July 14 was almost 130,000. This week, the daily average is less than 70,000 and trending down. But it was just 28,000 in April, while in January more than 800,000 cases were reported on average every day.