Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??
I think there are 2 potential reasons - one is that the initial peak comes from a small initial base of infection that rapidly spreads to all it can until things get locked down. So whilst you might feel like the disease is continuing to spread it is in fact lying dormant waiting for....release of lockdown...which allows a sudden massive increase in the numbers of people to infect and the disease spreads even more rapidly as people mass together thinking they are now safe.
The second reason is the potential for a further wave to be a mutated form of the virus which is either more deadly or has adapted to overcome initial treatments. The Spanish Flue epidemic highlighted both of these. As the initial first wave subsided the First world war ended, leading to mass celebrations, mass movement of troops around the world. This also coincided with a virulent strain coming from an American Army camp that effected younger, fitter people far more than the first wave.
This second wave travelled more globally as troops were sent back to places like India and lead to the complete overwhelming of medical resources as young fit men drowned in their own blood. It's estimated that around 10-15 million died in the first wave and 50 - 85 million died in the second wave. Some people think this has no relevance because of modern medicine and while they didn't have things like antibiotics back then, that would only have helped avoid secondary infection, not the disease itself.
This is very much a worst case scenario...it is most likely that the mutations will be to lessen the diseases impact rather than increase it. However if we release lockdown too early there is an increased risk that one of the potentially thousands of mutations that could occur will prove to be one that makes it more deadly, or adapts to overcome one of our treatment methods.