The evidence is clear. The rise in COVID cases is due to protests, not reopening the economy

On May 25 George Floyd was murdered by a policeman in broad daylight. What followed was protests, night after night in many cities. Over 500 cities have had protest rallies. The rallies, while mostly peaceful all violate COVID protocol, many protestors do not wear masks, social distancing is not practiced, and loud shouting, breathing hard through your mouth emitting COVID mist is going on for hours.

The incubation time for COVID infection is from 5 to 15 days, the COVID cases should start increase about June 8 or so, it took a few days for the protesters to get organized. The typical age for protesters is 20 to 25 years, so death rates would not necessarily increase, since the risk for death from the coronavirus doubles for every 9 years you age.

On the other hand, if the spike in COVID cases is due to reopening the economy, the death rate should follow the increase in cases by about 10 days.

Let us look at the COVID cases for U.S.A. as of July 13:

As we can see, the U.S.A. was on a slow decline in cases until about June 14, and a much larger decline in death cases until about Jul 8. The rise in cases since June 14 is much larger than the rise in deaths. This means the increase in cases is from protestors, not from opening the economy.

A most interesting case is Florida

From new cases being about 1000 per day, they started increasing on about June 8 and are now over 10,000 a day. Death rates on the other hand have less than doubled.

Another interesting state id Arizona:

From about 300 new cases a day up to June 5, it has  since increased tenfold. The death rate meanwhile has less than tripled, which again means it is the young people that are getting the virus.

There has been about 20 million protestors since the process started. It is impossible to contact trace 20 million people, many of which want to do away with all authority anyway, so we will have to settle for herd immunity. Following the example of Sweden herd immunity should start to manifest itself in a month or so, In New York City it has already started.

In any case, we will probably achieve herd immunity before a vaccine is available.