It’s official: After falling for more than two straight months, the average number of daily COVID-19 cases across the U.S. has begun — just barely — to rise again, inching up from a low of 54,059 earlier this week to 57,322 on Wednesday.

In emerging hot spots such as Michigan, meanwhile, the pattern is more pronounced. There, cases have soared by 121 percent over the last two weeks, and hospitalizations are up by 81 percent over the same period.

So is this the start of the variant-driven “fourth wave” that Americans have been fearing ever since the end of our horrific holiday surge?

The answer, reassuringly, appears to be no — at