Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I don't care that the prediction is wrong, I'm sure this stuff is hard to predict. It's that he's consistently so overconfident. Now he says he's "positive" the pandemic will be over by October. Well, probably. But there are downside risks: new variants, waning immunity, etc. https://t.co/rfoWbCtwoh — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

COVID cases have fallen to 33K per day (7-day average) since Neil Ferguson, perhaps the UK's most prominent epidemiologist, said it was "almost inevitable" that cases would hit 100K/day. https://t.co/zE6fYgw2eh https://t.co/pzFgU2gmBg — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheStalwart Same energy https://t.co/pXpR2g25Mo — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@allahpundit In practice I think it gives vaccinated people some measured guidance in the face of a lot of anxiety. Do you need to go back to shelter-in-place because of Delta? Hell no. Even universal mask wearing would be too much. But at a crowded Walmart in SE Missouri? Sure, mask up. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The CDC's new masking recommendations seem fine to me, but it's pretty low stakes as compared to anything related to vaccine policy. If you want to get mad at the public health agencies, get mad at them for not having fully authorized the vaccines yet. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes @joshtpm Yeah, and that isn't necessarily a constant across ideologies or political systems or over time. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes @joshtpm Yeah. And in general, all of this seems under-philosophized. This should be an important moment for moral and political philosophy and comparative perspectives. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm I'm sure it biases my perspective that I don't have kids. Anyway, I'm a big fan of yours and none of this is personal etc. I think about this stuff a lot and sometimes the replies are a good place to dig into things a little more. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm For that matter, it seems kind of nuts to be that lockdowns became coded as a "liberal" position, given that they tended to redistribute welfare from young people and gig economy workers toward older people with nice homes and white-collar jobs. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm I don't think it's about the *stats* at all. I just think, having been through a lot election cycles and having seen a lot of motivated reasoning, and also just generally being a person that doesn't have a lot of fucks to give, I'm pretty good about detecting partisan reasoning. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm School-closures are a good example. Maybe you can make some "liberal" arguments for school closures but they aren't self-evident. Many arguments about COVID policy are orthogonal to traditional liberal-conservative positions. And yet liberal elites have very strong views on them. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm But partisanship is an extremely powerful factor! I think both elite/"expert" and rank-and-file college-educated liberals are deluding themselves if they think their views aren't heavily influenced by partisanship. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm If they had tried to make any sort of coherent philosophical argument, liberals would likely have been against school closures, which were very likely to both worsen inequality and undermine support for public services. So it was mostly anti-Trump partisan signaling. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm I just think it's one of the more obvious examples of expert partisanship given that nobody had any priors about any of this stuff before Feb. 2020. Like, IMO it's kind of crazy that the "liberal" position is that public schools should have been closed to in-person learning. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm There are also selection effects. The public health experts who have more public prominence tend by definition to be more savvy about media & politics. You probably gain more prominence in e.g. the NYT if you tend to confirm liberal political priors under the auspices of science. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm Having followed the news for the past year-and-a-half it seems like one of the more self-evident assertions. The cartwheeling over the protests last June was perhaps the most obvious example. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm Yeah, many of the more prominent public health experts are very partisan. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If you read what public health experts think about the US entry policy, they mostly think it's crazy, but they tend to downplay criticism, maybe because they're liberals w/colleagues in the Biden Administration. Meanwhile political reporters don't want to "question the science". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The WH is taking advantage of media shortcomings by citing the Delta variant and giving this quasi-scientific BS rationle. It makes no scientific sense given there's ~no correlation between which counties are banned and how much COVID spread they have. https://t.co/vB2Z7E56O6 https://t.co/akbMFcl1L8 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MarkHarrisNYC If you think (as a supermajority of Democrats do in polls) that 20%+ of COVID infections result in hospitalizations then it's "correct" to be extremely cautious. But the actual figure is more like 2%. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MarkHarrisNYC I think people can make a lot of errors in evaluating COVID data. Obviously the most important example right now is in people (well, conservatives mostly) tending to deny the benefits of vaccines. But liberals have made their share of errors too: https://t.co/2XIvqBcHVL — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MarkHarrisNYC What's happening currently of course! Although there's argument that two wrongs make a right because vaccinated people tend to overreact to Delta news. 20% of infections being breakthroughs in a place with high vaccination rates would be pretty good news. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MarkHarrisNYC There's a pretty easy explanation. The NY numbers are from February onward and the LA numbers are from June onward and breakthroughs are more common under Delta which only became common recently. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CrackingAAces @Protentialmn Vz f , — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The situation where you scan a menu digitally *but don't order digitally* is dumb though. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Ehh wouldn't put a lot of money on it but I think I'd bet against QR codes becoming entrenched at restaurants where service is a significant part of the experience. And maybe restaurants where service isn't a significant part of the experience go entirely contactless. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You could argue that it would be too much work for the US to constantly update the list of countries based on current conditions except the State Department already does *exactly that* for Americans traveling *to* those countries. https://t.co/BXNQIIRoF7 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

People from Slovenia are currently banned from entering the US whereas people from Malaysia are allowed, even though Malaysia currently has >10x as many cases per capita. https://t.co/OS9ybJfsvX — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There were ~240,000 reported Delta cases in the US last week (and probably another ~2 million unreported Delta infections) but yeah let's keep those Delta-carrying Europeans out! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There were a reported ~240,000 cases of Delta in the US last week (and probably an additional ~2 million *unreported* cases) ,, ?& — PolitiTweet.org