That is too bad for Californians. Other states are doing much better on a per-capita basis.
Vaccines will be important, but they aren't necessarily required to see a major change in cases and deaths. The NYT's reported this morning that we may be starting to see some level of herd immunity (hence the crazy fast case drops across the globe, despite not having had enough time for vaccines to work). There certainly seems to be some seasonality in play too.
Absent a variant problem, we are going to see a very different spring and summer. Others disagree with me here, and make a good argument about variants, but I remain cautiously optimistic about variants not being a huge issue.
We will probably see some cases next winter, but it won't be like this winter - particularly if vaccination rates continue as they are or speed up. They should speed up with J&J coming on line. Utah expects to have enough vaccine for everyone by May. But again, I think we are seeing that we have probably seen the worst of the pandemic, even absent wide-spread vaccine distribution. Even if we can just vaccinate the highest-risk people, the virus quickly becomes much less of a threat to humanity.
All that said - I agree we won't see a return to full cruising for a long time. But I don't think anyone was really expecting that, were they? I think we all thought it would be limited capacity with restrictions for some time.