I'm not sure if we'll get quite as low in transmission this spring as the minimums the last 2 years because of a very low winter peak not as efficiently cleaning up the susceptables. A bit of uncharted territory, since immunity is waning but we don't have strong variant growth. 
Even without a strongly growing variant, I'm still confident we will have a decently sized summer wave. Parts of the south and west basically had no wave at all in the winter, thus the susceptibility is slowly increasing.
But the question is, how long will the decline hold on until we start the summer increase without a new fast variant? If the decline hangs on until late May or June, we may get below 2023/24's lows.
What I mean by cleaning up the susceptables: a large wave will blow past the threshold of people infected to get to Re<1.0 much further than in a small wave. Thus the decline down after will be faster and likely lead to a deeper minimum. That's how we got so low after BA1 in 2022
If NB.1.8.1 has any significant speed in the US, it will elevate the summer wave. I don't know what it will that variant look like for the US yet after it grew quickly in Hong Kong. Very different immunity backgrounds in the populations.
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