Seed I think it depends some on where you get your news. I try (and often fail) to get mine from different sources, like my local newspaper and two different TV channels. They all have their biases so you have to pay attention, but if they all three agree on something they are probably closer to the truth than if only one mentions it. If it's only one they are telling you how to think, they do ave a bias. I'll read some internet articles but try hard to identify the source. Some are blatantly partisan and some read like the Russians are trying to tear our country apart. But occasionally I get one I consider good, like a recent one on how the supply chain works. The things he mentions make sense and agrees with things I saw back when I was working.
I agree we don't have a good handle on how many people are or have been infected. We do not currently have and have not had enough accurate and reliable tests. There are a lot of unreliable tests out there. When someone says there are plenty of tests out there, well there are. But what they fail to mention is that many are unreliable, To me that is worse than no test at all. Some have been approved as accurate but as you mentioned in another post some tests give a 30% inaccurate result. You wouldn't know that if you listen to a single news source and they don't mention that "some" part.
I'll mention here that I don't know where you get your news. But based on how different people cover the news I can see where different people have different views of things. The difference in the impeachment coverage between Fox and NBC was day and night. If you watched Fox, not guilty. If you watched NBC, guilty. But to make that comparison you have to be able to watch without getting mad.
In my opinion all deaths are not being attributed to the Coronavirus. We don't have adequate reliable testing so there is some guessing involved, and different people can play with numbers, so it's more challenging to get an accurate death count. They have guidelines as to how to attribute deaths, there is some human judgment involved. I think the numbers ere in the ballpark, but it's something like the Spanish Flu. The estimate is that between 500,000 and 675,000 people died in the US with a population of a little over 100,000,000. With today's population that would be well over 1,500,000 deaths.
There are some unique things about the Spanish flu. It did not originate in Spain. They are not 100% sure of course but one theory is that it originated in Kansas and the soldiers of Fort Leavenworth in WWI spread it. The countries actively fighting the war did not report deaths, that would be a propaganda victory for their opponents. It mostly hit the Allies side. They could not "social distance" because that would hinder manufacturing and the war effort. A lot of those things are not in play with the Coronavirus. Those are the types of things that people that study past pandemics look at and try to learn from. The reason it was called the Spanish Flu was that Spain was neutral and not fighting. So they more accurately reported the deaths so people associated it with Spain.
I don't look at the number of deaths as how things are going today. There is a lag time between someone getting infected and dying. Rate of death reports how you were doing a month ago. To me the more accurate data is how many people are in the hospital with coronavirus and how many people are on ventilators. There is still a lag time but these are the critical cases. Until we get enough reliable tests we can't go by number of reported cases.
Looking at this kind of data is why I dispute your claim that the rate of infections hasn't slowed. In areas that locked down and put social distancing in effect fairly early, that data is trending downward. New Orleans was an early hot spot, probably due to Mardi Gras. The mayor clamped down pretty early and the data is moving in the right direction. In areas of the state where the lockdown was not put into place or actually followed the numbers don't look that good. New Orleans meets the Federal guidelines to open back up some. Some other areas of the state do not. The Governor is planning on reducing some requirements statewide, but still with restrictions. It's not going to be a snap your fingers and we're back to full blown wide open. It will take time.