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The world is complicated.

* Very likely that relaxation of distancing is contributing to COVID cases increasing
* But there are many states/countries that where distancing is decreasing but cases are not increasing
* Formal "opening" status is only loosely related to distancing
Relatedly, I don't think there should be a lot of triumphalism over "see, we said cases would spike in [insert state] once it reopened" as those predictions often implied an IMMEDIATE spike in cases within 2-3 weeks of re-openings even though openings were initially very limited.
Like the way this whole thing has played out has been regrettably predictable. People would make vastly over-reaching predictions at first that would lead to a "see, experts wrong again!" narrative, and then that might contribute to complacency later on.

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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking:

Newly reported deaths
Today: 775
Yesterday: 284
One week ago (6/17): 713

Newly reported cases
T: 33K
Y: 27K
6/17: 24K

Newly reported tests
T: 511K
Y: 465K
6/17: 467K

Positive test rate
T: 6.4%
Y: 5.8%
6/17: 5.1%
Just no good news here at all. Deaths are up week-over-week, which hasn't been happening much lately. Most cases since May 1, with a big week-over-week increase. And highest positive test rate since May 16, so this surge in cases is NOT just a reflection of more testing.
Tuesdays do tend to be bad days, with reporting sometimes being "lumpy" as states clear weekend backlogs. So, there's that. But bad trends overall, and there's no particular reason to expect an abrupt reversal of them.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
Another predictable thing: that Trump would try to discourage testing because he figured out that the media tended to focus on raw case counts without considering test volume (though, the coverage of this has gotten more sophisticated recently IMO).
And to be clear: the CURRENT increase in cases is almost certainly real and NOT just the result of expanding testing. At least not in the South and the West, where cases are rising much faster than tests in a number of states.

I wish people had been more careful before b/c there were a lot of false alarms before driven by increases in testing or other artifacts in the data.

We have a real alarm now, however. These numbers adjust for testing and show increases in many states:

rt.live
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
Saw someone suggest "cooling degree days" (basically the number of days that it's hot enough out that you'd want the AC on) as a proxy for states where it's currently too hot for people to want to be outdoors. It is indeed quite predictive of current COVID spread.
What's also interesting is that if you add temperature to this, higher temps are associated with lower spread (as most research predicts), controlling for other factors. So heat helps, but being outdoors helps, and you don't want it to be so hot that folks do everything inside.
I would not be surprised if a lot of the early research on weather conflated temperature effects vs. indoor/outdoor effects. If you're comparing places in March, then people will be outdoors more often in warmer places. But that's not necessarily true in the summer.
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