Infections up 15 per cent in a fortnight, with 37,000 recorded in a day. For those who are inclined to see it that way, the graph of US Covid-19 cases is confirmation of the folly of reopening society far too soon, and ‘throwing away’ all that hard work during lockdown, as Matt Hancock likes to put it.
But there is a little problem with this analysis: while the graph of cases in the US shows something which could be described as a second spike, the graph of deaths has stubbornly refused to follow suit. Quite the reverse: having peaked at over 2,000 deaths a day in April it is now down to around 600 a day and falling steadily.
Until the middle of May, the two graphs seemed to be coupled. Deaths trailed the number of new recorded cases by a fortnight, rising and falling in tandem.
