Welcome to the inquiry. I'm Charmin Kosea. Each week, one question, four experts and an answer.

It's the 4th of July, Independence Day in America. President Donald Trump is tweeting.

Cases cases, cases,

exclamation mark.

If we didn't test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases, he types.

In a certain way way our tremendous testing success gives the fake news

media all they want. Cases. The tweet continues. In the meantime, deaths and the all-important mortality rate goes down.

You don't hear that from the fake news and you never will.

He ends on a question. Anybody need any ventilators? Last week America

recorded 55,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day, the world's biggest daily increase.

Its average a few months ago was 20,000. America's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauchy, believes 100,000 cases

a day could happen if the current pace is maintained. He also called the recent surge disturbing.

So this week we ask, why are COVID cases rising in the US.

Part one, the scale of the problem.

Part one, the scale of the problem.

I've worked as a public health official at the local level, at the state level and at the federal level. And this is very, very painful to watch.

Just show the state. very painful to watch. Josh Schaffstein is Vice Dean for public health practice and community engagement for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He's tracking the pandemic's path across America.

Over the last couple of weeks we have seen substantial increases. Our curve was sort of

headed downward very slowly,

and then it just started zooming upward.

The start of this month saw a high of 50,000 cases

a day for the first time, and then it continued to climb.

...