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New cases ticking up here, but still moving along at a slower clip on the vaccines. 58% of the population has had it. 11% of the population has had Covid.

Cases are irrelevant now.  Vaccinated people can still breathe in the virus, still produce an immune response, and still test positive for it, even though they don't get sick and are highly unlikely to spread it.

Now, the only meaningful metrics, are hospitalizations/ICU/deaths.

On that note, here in my county, hospitalization admits are rising slightly.  That's what is worrisome.  Unfortunately they don't publish data on what% of those people are vaccinated.

While obviously that's true of your county, we're seeing more and more places that are releasing data on this and deaths are almost universally in the unvaccinated. 

For example, Maryland just released that 100% of all COVID deaths in June were unvaccinated, and 93% of all hospitalizations were...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/covid-maryland-unvaccinated-cases-deaths/2021/07/06/400bf08a-de86-11eb-ae31-6b7c5c34f0d6_story.html

For the deaths, it's not huge numbers... Daily average for June was <10/day. I'm just looking at the Worldometers and back of the envelope suggests about 5 per day, or ~150 deaths in the month of June. But every one of those was unvaccinated... 

Maryland has a little over 50% vaccination at this point, so that's a pretty compelling stat in my mind. 

I think new case numbers are still relevant as an early indicator, they just aren't completely definitive (never have been).

I think utee is correct

hospitalizations and deaths is much more important

so fat even with a slight uptick in cases deaths remain low

I agree hospitalizations is probably the most important metric, but it's a trailing indicator.  New cases is a leading indicator when we compare with data over time.  If you see an uptick in new cases, you almost certainly can expect hospitalizations to follow in 2-3 weeks.

I agree hospitalizations is probably the most important metric, but it's a trailing indicator.  New cases is a leading indicator when we compare with data over time.  If you see an uptick in new cases, you almost certainly can expect hospitalizations to follow in 2-3 weeks.

Im not sure that will be the fact with the vaccinations affecting the reaction of testing positive

I am pretty sure where we see a significant increase in positive tests, we'll see hospitalizations go up in 2-3 weeks, without exception.