Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@WesPegden There may be an argument for individualizing the risk calculation although I'd argue it's inconsistent with how we've handled other aspects of the pandemic. A lot of interventions like school/hospitality closures fall hard on young people & may outweigh their individual benefit. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I think it's important though that there *hadn't* been a particular public/media panic about blood clots and the J&J vaccine, at least not yet. So the FDA is sort of creating a Streisand Effect and giving these concerns more salience. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@WesPegden That's true but keep in mind that this person is passing on their case to an average of ~1 other person who may not be young/healthy. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So I don't think it's a particularly close decision. Even if blood clot deaths were 10-fold higher than observed so far, which is certainly possible, it wouldn't be a close decision. And that's before considering the knock-off effects on contributing to vaccine hesitancy. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

We also have to consider that the person who gets COVID because of a delayed vaccine will pass her case along to an average of 1 other person given where Rt is in the US right now. So the death rate is actually twice as high as I indicated above. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Now of course there's a lot of stuff we haven't considered. But it cuts in both directions. The incidence of blood clot deaths may be higher that indicated so far given we're not systematically monitoring for them. OTOH, we also have to consider the base rates in the population. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I disagree. Say there's a 1 in 100 chance someone acquires COVID because of a delayed vaccine (maybe conservative in the US where spread is still quite high) and a 1 in 150 chance they die from it. That's a 1 in 15,000 chance vs. 1 blood clot death in 7,000,000 doses so far. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If out of the blue one morning Gov. Newsom was like "Shark attacks are extremely rare, but out of an abundance of caution, we're closing every beach in California until we investigate more", that's not likely to get more people to go out to the beach, even once beaches reopen. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @TPCarney: Is the virus dangerous enough that we should vaccinate people with a vaccine that might possibly (but probably not) have a 1-… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But unless they know about that institutional culture, it's understandable that regular folks may think "hmm, maybe there's more going on". Especially when public health officials have eroded trust by telling a lot of "noble lies" to people, e.g. in the early days re: masks. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Why did the FDA recommend the pause anyway? Because of a combination of institutional culture, cognitive biases, and bureaucratic imperatives incentives, they greatly overweight the importance of rare adverse effects relative to people dying from COVID. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Also, part of the reason media coverage may be confused is that the FDA's reasoning isn't super logical. It probably isn't rational to pause administration of a vaccine that's already been given out 7 million times for "extremely rare" events in the middle of a deadly pandemic. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's also data on this based on decreased public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe following similar pauses there. So the FDA can't even use the excuse of flying blind. https://t.co/3I2rlLhfyz — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's also a high-stakes test for the FDA, and they failed it, because of course lots of people are going to take away the latter message. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Public health bureaucrats have some weird habits in how they reason under uncertainty and how they communicate to the public. It might help if they sought out experts from economics, sociology, psychology, etc., instead of telling everyone to stay in the their lane. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

6 cases out of 7 million people. What a disaster. This is going to get people killed. And it's going to create more vaccine hesitancy. These people don't understand cost-benefit analysis. They keep making mistakes by orders of magnitude. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One of the most important paragraphs I've read about the policy failures during the COVID pandemic. (From this book: https://t.co/BMI4q83bd5) https://t.co/l8izHQwx7q — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @galendruke: 🎧 New pod 🎧 -- Why support for gun control hasn't led to new legislation -- How to poll Republicans who may be disincline… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Cases and hospitalizations are now dropping fairly quickly in NYC despite the presence of variants. Though keep in mind that NYC both got hit hard by COVID *and* is well above-average on vaccinations, so a lot of people have some form or another of immunity here. https://t.co/yPZophH6gB — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@timmarchman @espiers Yeah... it's not a perfect comparison since Bloomberg never had to win a Democratic primary, but it is the same city that voted for Bloomberg 3 times. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@espiers I also think there's a sense in which his coming across as "not too political" (which often codes as "liberal enough, but not super 'woke'") holds appeal to a certain type of voter in a Buttigiegian way. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@espiers Betting markets have him as like a 2:1 favorite to be the next mayor and that seems reasonable to me. He's in a good position but not certain. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@espiers I think voters not knowing what Yang stands for his part of the reason he's succeeding. There's a lot of value in ambiguity especially if it makes people focus on his personality, silly tweets about bodegas, potential to be the first Asian-American mayor of NYC, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@espiers People (including me) said the same thing about Trump in 2016 and (not including me) Biden in 2020. If you look at the composition of the NYC Democratic electorate as a whole, it's not that progressive or liberal. Probably closer to Adams or Yang. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@WesPegden He's been sort of all over the place. Which is fine, it's good for experts to change their mind! But at every stage his opinions are expressed with a great deal of confidence. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But if an expert goes on TV and is not rebutted by other experts or by the host, the audience will think "well, this is what The Science says". In a written article where the reporter can interview lots of experts, it's easier to put things into context. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's also a tricky issue about how an expert frames a personal but out-of-consensus view when talking to the press. Osterholm's extremely pessimistic view is NOT the scientific consensus, by any means; the models are all over the place in terms of what to expect next. https://t.co/s7IgKq7VuT — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is the same guy who, on Feb. 13, confidently predicted that America was headed toward its "darkest days with this virus." Since then, the 7-day average death total has from 2594 to 755 (per Worldometers). https://t.co/AjBeWJ4tUo — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Check out, for example, this interview with Dr. Michael Osterholm on Meet The Press last week. It's relentlessly negative. He's spinning every fact in the most negative possible light. He's downplaying the effectives of vaccines. It all sounds terrifying. https://t.co/q6cvSrTppP https://t.co/A6DfuOjzyQ — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I've seen talk about how the media tends to emphasize negative news about COVID, which I don't doubt is true, but which surely stems in part from the fact that certain public health experts tend to heavily emphasize negative news when talking to the press. — PolitiTweet.org