Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Walked down the block in my relatively vaccinated section of Manhattan and ~50% property wearing masks over a fairly large sample (not counting people seated at restaurants etc.) Big gender gap. Typically had been around ~70%. #datajournalism — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickRiccardi @bendreyfuss I'm just imagining the fights my 10-year-old self would have had with my parents because I wanted to go to Pizza Hut and they wouldn't let me until I was fully vaccinated. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@notdred I think the CDC's timing makes perfect sense, I just think it's 20% about "the science has evolved" and 80% about these other practical considerations. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

What's changed? Cases have declined. But also with vaccines ~freely available, there are few adults left who are both i) unvaccinated and ii) adhere to public health guidance in the first place. And the few who do fall into that camp might see this as an incentive go get vaxxed. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

My working assumption is that the (overcautious) CDC guidance for vaccinated people was really mostly about unvaccinated people since they knew once they dropped the guidance for vaccinated people it would be a free-for-all. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm not sure why you'd want another news cycle centered around the fact that your candidate thought the median home price in Brooklyn is $100,000. https://t.co/uCAA0PlLyi https://t.co/JQbNxKE9oq — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So basically this is where the CDC wound up 4 weeks later. Worth noting that cases are down quite a bit from a month ago. I got a lot of "why aren't you listening to the experts?!?!" for this though. https://t.co/ibdaK66W3r https://t.co/GQ8ObHiVP0 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @FiveThirtyEight: Watch this. Trust us. https://t.co/O99y4d2mSf — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jbarro I think there's a fair amount of indifference between Yang and Adams on the left? One could draw an analogy to the 2016 GOP primary where "the establishment" saw it as a two-way race between Trump and Cruz and sort of gave up. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ronlondoncon: How fake news spreads. A tale in three parts. Link to CNBC story - quotes for which were clearly taken from Fiegl-Ding’… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Amid all the discussion about risk aversion today, this is a very creative intervention if you're trying to appeal to non-risk-averse people, who are less likely to take COVID precautions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is still relevant. If you obsessively follow what the experts think—including sometimes directly engaging with the experts—you often wind up 30 degrees removed from what other people incorrectly think the experts think, which is mediated by oversimplified media narratives. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Data on vaccination rates among the panel. About 80% fully vaccinated, many others partly vaccinated, although half had unvaccinated members in their household. https://t.co/X2V9r3XZyj — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ZoeMcLaren @sangerkatz I do all of these things, LOL. Although I still pulled up my mask 3 times when walking back from the grocery store just now. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm @CT_Bergstrom @nadabakos I think a lot of it is there's a gulf between "understandable" after a lot of new habits developed amid a very hard year, and "rational", with "reasonable" somewhere in between. All those terms are loaded (hence the scare quotes) but that's what some of these arguments are about. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kareem_carr It's not a perfect analogy but sometimes people like me are accused of thinking too much about "electability" or electoral outcomes when assessing political developments. And it's like...that's probably true, but that's also where my expertise lies, so of course I think about it. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kareem_carr Certainly reasonable and I'm sure it varies a lot from epi to epi too. But I also wonder if salience is an issue, i.e. epis are trained to think about certain types of risks or certain parts of the tradeoffs we face. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kurteichenwald @joshtpm @CT_Bergstrom @nadabakos I am reflecting the expert consensus, dude! There have been tons of peer-reviewed studies suggesting good news on medium-term immunity from natural infection. Less certainty about recent strains, to be sure. https://t.co/U9vPI1OtQS — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kareem_carr There are also positive benefits to others from seeing friends and family, participating in civic, religious and political life, contributing to the economy, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kareem_carr The risk of passing COVID along to others once vaccinated is fairly small and when interviewed about it, epis mostly attribute their caution to risk-aversion and pandemic-bred habits rather than concerns about spreading to others. https://t.co/LJ7FYNwI5r https://t.co/uadrgVIGQg — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm @CT_Bergstrom @nadabakos Case rates are falling rapidly even as social activity greatly ramps up. It seems to me that's easier to explain if natural immunity is also playing some role, since we're below the threshold that most epis seem to think is necessary for herd immunity from vaccinations alone. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm @CT_Bergstrom @nadabakos There's plenty of evidence that disease-acquired immunity is protective for most people against the strains that are currently most common in the US. So it's a big factor in the calculation right now. What happens down the road, we'll see. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DrPayItBack @JamesSurowiecki @notdred The pandemic has absolutely suffered from failing to solicit input from a broader range of experts, especially given that the things people fight about are largely not medical questions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm @CT_Bergstrom @nadabakos 35% fully vaccinated, another 11% partly so and then maybe another ~33% with naturally-acquired immunity (with some degree of overlap to the vaccinated population). A lot of people with some immune protection, especially older adults who are far far more prone to severe outcomes. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@notdred Nothing personal, but I think doctors have some fairly idiosyncratic ways of assessing risk and I think the groups that provide public health guidance would have benefited from being less doctor-centric. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Ahh, didn't see that the NYT also directly asked the epis about their risk aversion. (And indeed most described themselves as risk averse.) https://t.co/mdWb2ZftEv — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@trizzlor @CT_Bergstrom Maybe this was a noble impulse back in December or January, but by ~mid-March if you weren't getting vaccinated when eligible you were just delaying community immunity. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@AndreasShrugged @CT_Bergstrom 95% of my IRL friends are nowhere near this risk averse. Maybe that's why I'm friends with them though. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CT_Bergstrom Some of these activities are quite safe even for unvaccinated people. Also I understand why public health messaging doesn't emphasize this but partial vaccination provides some protection from ~2 weeks out so ramping up activity needn't be an on/off switch. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CT_Bergstrom The states that didn't have carveouts tended to have near universal availability anyway by late March or early April. I would guess that a very large majority of people surveyed here were eligible to be vaccinated. — PolitiTweet.org