Distribution of residuals is of interest for linear models, not the distribution of y

Load packages library(tidyverse) My (y) is not distributed according to my wishes! Let (Y) be a variable that we would like to model, for instance, Covid-19 cases. Now, there’s a widely hold belief that my (Y) must be distributed normally, or, in some cases, following some other assumed distribution (maybe some long-tailed distribution). However, this belief is not (strictly) true. What a linear model assumes is that the residuals are distributed normally, not the (Y) …