The Washington Post reports that "Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top disease expert, called the recent focus on the coronavirus’s decreasing mortality rate in the United States a 'false narrative'."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/07/coronavirus-live-updates-us
The politically correct "narrative," of course, is that the reason positive cases began rising in late June is because a dozen foolhardy Governors, most Republican and many Southern, began reopening in late April (e.g., OK, GA, TN, TX, SC) or the first week of May (CA, NV, UT, FL, IN, WY).
The politically correct explanation of why confirmed deaths kept falling as confirmed cases began to rise is, of course, that deaths are a "lagging indicator." For that to make any sense, the lag would have to exceed eight weeks of May and June - from the reopening to the still-invisible "lagged" rise of COVID-19 deaths.
The chart shows the July 8 CDC "Provisional Estimates" for all deaths involving COVID-19 (even if that was not the primary cause of death).
They are called provisional estimates because it takes 2-3 of weeks to collect all the death records, so the last two bars for late June will undoubtedly be higher as more data comes in. In the latest revision, for example, deaths were just slightly for early June. But, as the graph shows, that did nothing to change the truly amazing downward trend in deaths even indirectly related to COVID-19. So, we have some very good news about deaths which is either totally unreported (have you seen a graph like this in the Washington Post or New York Times?) or it is reported as a "false narrative" in some unexplained sense (the CDC is a corrupt right-wing source?).
We also have constant, hysterical headlines about case numbers (which inevitably rise with more testing) screaming that the danger of death is getting worse and worse by the day for the whole nation (except Gov. Cuomo's death-free New York), and not just in such unforgivably Southern states as Texas and Florida. The good news is that positive cases will rise quickly when testing rises rapidly and focuses on vulnerable hospitals and nursing homes. The bad news is that the media treats such obvious results of better testing as bad news.
It is right and reasonable to caution that the most recent figures on COVID-related deaths are very raw and incomplete and therefore look too good to be entirely true. But they could double in later reports and still not look anything like a "second wave" or crisis.
For anyone to suggest that equally rough estimates about record numbers of positive tested cases (regardless of age or health) are more informative or more important than fewer deaths, would be a false narrative indeed.