The problem is that by the time you see the numbers changing, it's too late. With a R0 (multiplication rate) of 2.5, the progression goes like this:
1,300
3,250
8,125
20,313
50,781
126,953
317,383
793,457
1,983,643
4,959,106
Add all those up and you have 8.26 million cases in a matter of months. With a 2-week incubation period during which transmission occurs before symptoms, the disease spreads quietly before exploding all at once.
There is no normal to return to until we have either 1) massive testing and quarantine of infected people, or 2) a vaccine. Returning to "normal" without one of those options means sentencing a huge number of people to death.