Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Good news, though I'd note that currently only ~250m Americans (i.e. people aged 16+) are eligible to be vaccinated and trials for younger age groups are proceeding a bit slowly. Although, these may eventually be needed as booster (3rd) doses. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is good, particularly the parts about the lack of urgency on rapid & at-home testing. Somehow the mantra of test, test, test got forgotten about as the pandemic rolled along. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It seems like one key question is whether there are members of Congress who would maximize their chances of being re-elected (winning the primary + the general) by joining a new center-right party. And I'd think there probably are, though not more than a handful. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DKThomp FWIW that Friday figure was sort of misleading. Over the past several days, we've started to see some of the week-over-week declines that people were hoping for/expecting given the decline in hospitalizations. Still very high in absolute numbers, though. https://t.co/l2ADi6TxkI — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kakape But I noticed in the UK that the fitness advantage of B117 was initially estimated to be 70% and then revised down to 50% and then to more like 30% in the most recent estimates as it became more widespread. It seems like the dynamics are maybe slightly complicated. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kakape There too, though, the raw number of B117 cases was initially growing at a rather brisk pace and has now flattened out a lot. Certainly not great that it's growing at all, though. https://t.co/Uf4xVI1RAj — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kakape Is the growth of B117 slowing down? For a while it was doubling every week (e.g. 13% vs 7.4), but the rate of growth has been slower in the last couple of updates. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @zeynep: Read the enraging update to this story. The doctor went above and beyond duty to make sure vaccine weren't wasted, tried every… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@phl43 @davidshor I'm certainly not reflexively pro-lockdown and I agree that their costs (especially non-economic costs) aren't considered enough. Though I happen to think a number of factors make the case for keeping restrictions in place quite strong in e.g. the US and the UK for right now. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@phl43 @davidshor To bring this full circle, I agree that this is exactly the sort of thing that you shouldn't be using the "eyeball test" for and people are at risk of cherry-picking if they do. I also don't think it's completely intractable, though; you can probably draw some rough bounds. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@phl43 @davidshor If you're looking at cases instead, then you run into issues like incomplete reporting, lags, etc, especially early in the pandemic. And more recently, other confounders like new variants emerging, meaningful levels of community immunity, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@phl43 @davidshor For sure. I guess what I'd say is it seems better to look directly at behavioral data to tease out the question of lockdown vs. voluntary effects. Like if you compare California (strict lockdown) to Utah (none) you see the same general pattern but some difference in magnitude. https://t.co/ssIyww73Xp — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

For sure. I guess what I'd say is it seems better to look directly at behavioral data to tease out the question of lockdown vs. voluntary effects. Like if you compare California (strict lockdown) to Utah (none) you see the same general pattern but some difference in magnitude. https://t.co/GGbL3B2FT4 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidshor @phl43 I think there's probably more exogeneity in the first (spring) wave of lockdowns. Israel has had 3 lockdowns. You can CLEARLY see the first, also clearly the the second (though the effect is smaller) but the third in December? Harder to make out. https://t.co/m1gOxoNtX2 https://t.co/SGhWszd0hd — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@notdred Some of the discussion also seems to turn on the weirdly abstract question of what the threshold would be if people stopped taking any precautions whatsoever, when in practice both government-mandated restrictions and personal behavior will relax incrementally over time. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias It's not just that people who aren't vaccinated are more likely to get COVID going forward, but also that, for various reasons including structural inequality, people who have had COVID are less likely to get vaccinated. So, yeah, this would seem like a factor in the math. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@julia_azari @nataliemj10 I'm sort of running a social science experiment! Too bad we can't do an RCT. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It seems good that COVID cases are falling rather quickly in the UK despite the presence of B.1.1.7. They have a strict lockdown and they're vaccinating people quickly (with an emphasis on first doses) so it's not happening on its own, but still good news. https://t.co/NnmjVlI6m8 https://t.co/7Py3BzW1hi — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Middlebrow appeal + obsessive press coverage is a winning formula (although Biden didn't get obsessive press coverage in the primary). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sdbaral It seems like employers could have a role to play here, either through on-site vaccination programs or through incentives to get people vaccinated. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sdbaral Yeah, with some exceptions, I think it's probably right to assume that places/communities/etc. with higher incidence of COVID will have lower vaccine uptake, and vice versa. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So maybe we get herd immunity in blue cities with large numbers of college grads, but not in rural red areas? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sdbaral Yeah. I worry about things like it being a *very* good idea for Americans to get a booster dose in fall 2021 but there not being a lot of urgency about this because transmission is low in the summer. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sdbaral Even now, I think people maybe underrate scenarios like "it'll be totally fine to see your vaccinated elderly parents on July 4, but by Christmas it'll be complicated again" between seasonality + variants. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sdbaral Yeah, one of my pet peeves is how the lack of absolute certainty about seasonality (or the understandable desire to refute the idea that the virus would just "go away") has tended to lead to the denial of its (probable?) existence. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @benbbaldwin @ElGee35 I became convinced at some point that very smart defenders (e.g. Draymond, Gobert) have some alertness as to the free throw proficiency of the opponent they're defending and that affects their likelihood to foul. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Sort of interesting that the official EU message is (in part) "take the vaccine so you can start doing stuff and get back to normal" whereas that's a somewhat controversial message in the US. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @DiseaseEcology: Vaccine efficacy in blocking infection & transmission (I think) We can now estimate the (minimum) reduction in transmi… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@poniewozik Like 4 reasons for the pessimism bias: 1. If it bleeds, it leads 2. Public health folks (& others) want to encourage people to remain careful 3. Twitter is ~liberal and when Trump was POTUS, people wanted to point toward how badly things were going 4. People emotionally hedging — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The situation in scary now, and people will probably come to their senses once it improves, but there's a certain p… https://t.co/6QWCY7QGU2 — PolitiTweet.org