Assessment of the prediction
Friedberg predicted that within “a couple of months” from late November 2020 (roughly January–February 2021), the U.S. would be in a “pretty kind of comfortable position” with respect to COVID-19 due to a combination of natural immunity and vaccine rollout. In reality, the U.S. entered the worst phase of the pandemic to that point during this window, with record deaths and hospitalizations and only modest vaccine coverage. This clearly contradicts the prediction.

1. Severity of the U.S. COVID situation in Jan–Feb 2021

• January 2021 was the deadliest month of the U.S. pandemic, with on the order of ~95,000–106,000 COVID deaths that month alone, more than any other month (including December 2020).(forbes.com)
• CDC data show the 7‑day average of new deaths peaked around 3,378 per day on January 11, 2021, the highest point of the pandemic up to then.(archive.cdc.gov)
• Hospitalizations hit record levels: Reuters and HHS data reported 130,834 people hospitalized with COVID-19 on January 6–7, 2021, the highest number since the pandemic began, with hospitals in states like California rationing care.(equities.com)
• CDC’s COVID-NET reports that cumulative hospitalization rates continued to climb through late January 2021 and that weekly rates had been on an elevated plateau above all earlier peaks for about three months.(archive.cdc.gov)

These indicators describe an acute crisis, not a “comfortable position.”

2. Status of natural immunity and vaccination by early 2021

• A Bayesian evidence-synthesis model estimated that about 27% of the U.S. population had ever been infected by January 1, 2021, with states ranging from ~7% to ~45% infected.(pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) This is far short of any plausible herd-immunity threshold for the original virus, particularly given uneven geographic spread and uncertain durability of infection-acquired immunity.
• Vaccine rollout was still in its early phases through February 2021:
  • As of February 1, 2021, CDC data (summarized by Respiratory Therapy) showed 32.2 million doses administered, with ~26 million people having received at least one dose and only ~5.9 million fully vaccinated—single‑digit percentages of the total U.S. population.(respiratory-therapy.com)
  • By March 11, 2021—already outside the “couple of months” window—The Washington Post reported 62.5 million people had received one or more doses and 32.4 million were fully vaccinated, still a minority of the population.(washingtonpost.com)

Thus, by January–February 2021, neither infection‑induced immunity nor vaccination levels were high enough to significantly tame spread or prevent severe outcomes at a national scale.

3. Overall judgment
Given that:

• January 2021 was the deadliest month of the U.S. pandemic and featured record hospitalizations and ongoing health‑system strain,(forbes.com)
• Vaccine coverage was still limited to a relatively small share of the population by late February 2021,(respiratory-therapy.com)
• Best estimates indicate that cumulative infections (natural immunity) covered only about a quarter of the population by early January 2021,(pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

the U.S. was not in a “pretty kind of comfortable position” with respect to COVID-19 within a couple of months of late November 2020. Any period that might reasonably be called “relatively comfortable” (e.g., summer 2021) arrived several months later than his forecast window and depended much more on expanded vaccination than on the near‑term natural immunity he emphasized.

Conclusion: The prediction did not come true; it is wrong.