It looks like the death rate has peaked, but there's a caveat. The peak coincided with the data anomaly that was likely caused by hurricane in Florida and the reporting system upgrade in Texas. To my eye, there has yet to be compensation for the data that went missing earlier this week. You can see the effect in the daily new cases (on the linear scale). There's a big dip noticeable just a few days ago, but there has not been a reciprocal rebound. There's a similar signal in the daily death rate, and it has caused a downward offset in the 7-day average. New cases peaked around July 19, so the timing of the peak in deaths is a bit early based on prior lags of about 3 weeks.
Reporting issues aside, it does appear that when masks and social distancing programs are in place it can have a noticeable impact. And the opposite is true. When all caution is thrown to the wind the numbers can explode. It's going to get interesting as schools open across the country with varying amounts of precautions in place. We are suddenly going to have a large segment of the population mixing it up (for those places where school is physically going back into session) like we've never had before. Other countries have run this experiment to varying degrees with not-so-good results.
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Our kids start on Monday. They're going virtual with a save a seat option for January. We'll see.
The US school system is massive operation with a large amount of vectors. I don't see how this will be successful unless most parents keep kids home and the in class cohorts are small. Then you have the environmental impacts. Kids in FL are stuck inside with a/c.
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