A rolling average will always slightly lag if there is a significant change in the rate of infections. If you are experiencing exponential growth, the rolling a

A rolling average will always slightly lag if there is a significant change in the rate of infections. If you are experiencing exponential growth, the rolling average is significantly lagging behind. 1 case on day 0 2 on 1 4 on 2 8 on 3 16 on 4 32 on 5 64 on 6 7 day average is only 18 cases but the next day you have 128 cases and the average is still only 119. If there's a major down turn in case numbers, the average will be slightly higher. This is an extreme example but my point still stands. Its still a helpful metric when you have infrequent reporting since the incubation time is not consistent, not everyone is getting tested immediately when they feel symptoms, the time a positive test result and official reporting may be delayed, and there are spikes of infections that likely occur on weekends or holidays when people are having social events. The best data would come from daily testing of everyone with immediate reporting but that simply was not possible.