#The not-so-deadly second spike and other commentary

A medical worker administers a test for the coronavirus disease at a Houston-area hospital.
REUTERS

With US coronavirus “infections up 15 percent in two weeks,” some see a “confirmation of the folly of reopening society far too soon,” notes Ross Clark at Spectator USA. Not so fast: While the graph of cases “could be described as a second spike, the graph of deaths has stubbornly refused to follow suit. Quite the reverse”: It’s down to 600, from 2,000 a day in April, “and falling steadily.” Why? Four possibilities: “More cases are being recorded, as a result of ramping-up of testing; the disease is becoming less virulent; we are getting better at treating it; or the disease has started infecting less-vulnerable groups.” There is some evidence for them all, but the bottom line remains: Using “a rise of recorded infections” to “raise the specter of a deadly second spike is not telling the full story.”

Urban desk: Don’t Count Manhattan Out

Ignore the “doleful predictions” of “urban-averse pundits who’ve forecast the demise of American cities for a half a century,” advises Steve ­Cuozzo at City Journal: “The reality is otherwise.” About 80 percent of Americans live in metro areas, a percentage that “has grown decade by decade,” and “a three-month hiatus in the normal commercial thrum won’t likely be a destiny-changer.” Data suggest that “companies are in no rush to downsize their real-estate footprints”; indeed, “future density restrictions will force some companies to need more, not less, space.” And many people “long to recapture the camaraderie and creative tension of a shared workspace.” Despite the fearmongering, then, “the lights will likely go back on over Manhattan’s skyline and stay on for a long time to come.”

Iconoclast: The Virtue of Moderation

Contra Barry Goldwater (sort of), “moderation in pursuit of justice is essential,” argues The Week’s Damon Linker. “Radical acts” that many can “view as acts of injustice in their own right” — from cancel culture to activists seeking to “fire professors for failing to affirm” left-wing positions to “mobs of protesters unilaterally deciding to tear down or deface statues” — come from “politically poisonous and destructive assumptions” that we can “fully master or purge” our past, “a fiction” that can only “bring political ruin.” Don’t try to “cut free from” our “both stunningly beautiful and grotesquely ugly” history; make improvements “in a spirit of moderation.” It’s “especially difficult” to convince people of these facts in “our time of partisan and ideological polarization” — but that’s “how progress is almost always made.”

Conservative: Don’t Jeopardize Racial Progress

The “frenzy of statue iconoclasm” has turned into a “theater of the ­absurd,” assaulting the very principles of Western civilization that allow racial progress, cautions Henry Olsen at The Washington Post. Though imperfect, “brave warriors” like George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant fought to “more fully implement” the ­“immortal principle” that all men are created equal — “America’s gift to the world” — and protesters who tear down statues of them “mock and dishonor” that idea. Only “modern Western civilization” has allowed “the peaceful, pan-racial democracies protesters say they want.” The American “edifice” built these past two centuries is a “solid foundation” on which to improve; “we must not burn it down in the vain hope that a better future can emerge from its bonfire.”

Legal beat: The End of Women’s Sports?

The Supreme Court’s ruling that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits “workplace discrimination against transgender employees” is “frighteningly problematic” for the future of female sports, warns Jennifer Braceras at The Hill. Traditionally, courts have found the act to allow “policies that separate or distinguish between males and females on the basis of biological differences.” But the new ruling found “an employer discriminates ‘because of sex’ any time that an employee’s sex factors into an adverse employment decision.” If that’s true, a male student has “the right to try for a spot (and, potentially, a scholarship) on a women’s team,” forcing women to “lose spots on athletic teams with limited rosters.” Some activists want exactly that — and the Supreme Court’s decision gives them “a powerful new weapon.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board