Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As an American it seems like an super unappealing idea and I get why football fans are furious about it. It seems so unappealing that I can't entirely believe the clubs are serious about it, although of course rich owners/people can badly misread the room. https://t.co/5sPY3ZJz8L — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I sort of don't get this Super League take. If previous threats haven't gotten you the concessions you wanted, then you take things one step further ... that's the very definition of brinksmanship. https://t.co/xHUzsra1h9 https://t.co/rz5Tg16VQO — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I also think Florida and Texas are much better substitutes for California than they are for New York and therefore that California is going to have more problems with out-migration than NY in the long term, but saving up a longer version of this take for later. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This looks like a lot of people moving (perhaps temporarily) into vacation/second homes in the NYC metro whereas in the SF Bay, it's people moving out of the area entirely. https://t.co/2hw64PDgZ7 https://t.co/Oqhhu2E4dF — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ddayen I think in a low-trust environment, people assume that actions speak louder than words. So when the FDA paused administration of the vaccine, people read that as "wow, this must be worse than they're letting on!" even though the FDA said it was out of an "abundance of caution". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ddayen 2) In the UK, when similar reports arose re: AZ, the government was like "yeah, these are no big deal because they're very rare and the benefits outweigh the risks". And perceptions of AZ remained largely intact, whereas they plunged in the EU where the vaccine was paused. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ddayen Well, two things here: 1) The FDA was the one who chose to highlight those reports and treat them as having tremendous significance despite how rare they were. And they came from a federal database, not news accounts. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The polling data suggests it's now going to be harder to convince those people to get vaccinated, but I've also started to encounter IRL examples of people saying stuff like "I heard there's something wrong with the J&J vaccine". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the people who dutifully read the fine print of FDA announcements already got their vaccine. What matters is how the vaccine-hesitant perceive the news and they're mostly going off headlines and word-of-mouth. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Meanwhile, the number of vaccinations has begun to decline and there are widespread reports of open availability all across the country. https://t.co/D2sA3C2esX — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If the FDA decision makes people more worried about the vaccines, then of course they'll say it was responsible to pause administration of a vaccine they're now worried about. But it's also going to make it harder to get people to take the vaccine. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The same poll shows the decision likely increased vaccine hesitancy, which is what really matters here. https://t.co/HEwYnQSwv4 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There is also a decline in people who say they'll let their children get vaccinated; 46% now vs. 52% from before the J&J pause. https://t.co/DeQjzgo3xt — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

True, the number of people in the not-likely-to-get vaccinated camp hasn't changed much; 30% in this survey vs. 29% before the J&J pause. But the hope was that group would keep declining as some folks on the fence were persuaded to get vaccinated. Resistance may be hardening. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Somewhat worrying numbers on vaccine hesitancy from the new Axios/Ipsos poll. 56% of US adults say they've gotten at least one vaccine dose already—great! But there aren't many Americans left who *haven't* gotten vaccinated but plan to do so. Just 14% fall into that category. https://t.co/tACS5m7yFI — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ZoeMcLaren I am considering confounds but I'm also considering Occam's Razor. I think it's worthwhile to take a somewhat pluralistic view. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Maybe it's just a coincidence and we were nearing a turning point anyway (very plausible IMO). But if the peak US vaccination day winds up coinciding *exactly* with when the J&J pause was announced (April 13), that's gonna look pretty 😬👀 to history. https://t.co/MrxIwfCflC https://t.co/pFC9DmgcA7 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved Your skepticism is probably called for, but I tend to think that if MLS had a more freewheeling set of bylaws, you'd nonetheless have a handful of rich owners willing to spend a LOT more, for better or worse. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved Yeah it's very much a chicken/egg issue. I do think if you had a few franchises in MLS with say a $150m payroll (e.g. NYFC, LA, Seattle, Atlanta, Toronto) and the talent to boot, they could draw some fairly large multiple of their current revenues. But that's hard to prove. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

My probably bad and naive soccer hot take is that soccer is now roughly as popular in the US as hockey or baseball and so there should be a breakaway league here that has much higher payrolls than MLS. https://t.co/18uoBWFqLN — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Like, this is not a 4th wave, at least not on a national basis. It credibly threatened to turn into a 4th wave at times and maybe it still could. But what we've had so far is a plateau with significant regional variation, and that's not quite how it's been covered in the press. https://t.co/dDGDzpi0Ex — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If this turns out to be the peak then this will have been more of a plateau than a 4th wave, except really in Michigan and a few other states. Obligatory "no guarantees" but with >50% of adults at least partly vaccinated, our odds are getting better. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

My best writing advice is to spend less time in front of your screen. Your brain needs time to process shit and stimulating it by going on a walk or a bike ride or hitting up a concert etc. can be really helpful. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @perrybaconjr: We looked at five of the big, broad questions that the media is grappling with as it covers this era of American politics… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I also think we should make more of a distinction between masks and other interventions. Masks can be annoying, but they're not that much of a burden. OTOH, if vaccinated people aren't seeing vaccinated family/friends in person, I think that entails a large cost to their welfare. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But that's precisely why I worry about experts who reinforce the notion that it's worth having a considerable amount of concern for risks on magnitude of say 1/1M. When it comes to COVID stuff, most people are probably "too" concerned about those risks already. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

FWIW, the below was intended more as a critique of experts than individuals. Low-probability risks are hard for our brains to compute, period. And after a year+ of having our brains rewired by (often legitimately very scary) COVID risks, it's even harder now. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The reason I think that some *vaccinated* people are in fact being irrational about COVID risk is stuff like this. It's inconsistent with how I imagine they'd handle other risks of a similar or indeed larger magnitude, e.g. riding in a car. https://t.co/asY1CrH3Y7 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias It was arguably a consequential mistake, too, since there were a lot of triage-type decisions (e.g. sending patients back to nursing homes) made on an assumption that hospitals would be completely and utterly overwhelmed. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias COVID hospitalization rates were also badly overestimated by some early models, e.g. the scientific consensus in like March 2020 was in the range of 5-20%, and it wound up being more like 2%. But there was hardly any press coverage of this. — PolitiTweet.org