If you plot by reporting date, you're gonna get a death graph that has approximately the same shape as the true data, but it's going to be delayed by a week or

If you plot by reporting date, you're gonna get a death graph that has approximately the same shape as the true data, but it's going to be delayed by a week or two. If you plot by actual death date, you're gonna get a death graph that's completely accurate for historical values, and constantly underestimated for the last week or two. In the first case, trend curves will always be correct, but you should have acted on them two weeks ago. In the second case, trend curves will always be wrong, so you have to apply a forecast before you act on them. Both presentations have errors, both require you to think before you act. But you might be right that plotting by reporting date creates an error that doesn't screw up regular people's intuitions too badly. Either way, statistics is hard and unintuitive, and presentation of statistical data has so many pitfalls and ways to intentionally or unintentionally mislead people's thinking. :-/