I would honestly ignore the case rates for the reason you stated. What if you had 500,000 tests tomorrow and discovered 30,000 people who didn't even know they had it? What does that really tell you?

Fatality rates are what people should focus on. Is Texas's fatality rates doubling every three days, or is it staying steady, or going down?

Europe is already having trouble with fruit production. Fruit is rotting because seasonal pickers can't work. If we loose food sources, a lot more people are going to die than from COVID-19.