These are very bad numbers for the USA. A new record of daily cases: 62,197 new cases. Positivity 9.5%. Fatalities 897. The clearest sense of the trajectory of the epidemic comes when you separate out New York and New Jersey from the rest of the country. 
2/ I think there's a good chance that some portion of that newly spiking death toll is still some lag from the holiday weekend. But overall they're clearly rising.
on the lag, NJ reported 142 deaths today. That has to be some backlog or adding earlier probable deaths. They haven't had anything like that number since May and nothing in the other data suggests a surge of actual recent fatalities. But overall clearly death toll trending up
