Home gardeners can't diagnose when to salvage vs. cull diseased tomato plants

Home gardeners face costly uncertainty when early blight appears on tomato plants—they don't know whether to spend time trimming affected leaves or accept total crop loss by removing the plant entirely. Current solutions (generic gardening forums, contradictory advice) lack clear decision frameworks tied to disease progression stages, forcing gardeners to make expensive guesses that either waste their harvest or their labor.