COVID cases are rising. COVID deaths are declining. Why? This all means a spike in coronavirus cases in any particular location doesn’t necessarily lead to more people dying. In fact, if you look at many of the graphs of case counts and deaths on the New York Times’ coronavirus map, the lines are doing different things. In Arizona, as cases rise, deaths are remaining relatively flat, with the highest number of deaths in a day happening back in May. Alabama saw a recent spike in deaths to accompany a jump in cases, but not as big as the spike in death, also back in May, when case counts were relatively low. In Florida, which hit its highest number of cases yesterday (2,783), the death rate appears to be falling slightly.

This could be in part because there is a delay between being diagnosed with the virus, and dying from it; we just have to wait and see on that front. But it’s also because the rate at which people are dying really depends on who in the population is adding to the case count. In at least a couple states, they tend to be younger.