Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is fairly good news overall, but I'd love to hear more from the Biden Administration on their plans to speed regulatory approval and production if/when* vaccines need to be updated. * Very likely a matter of when. https://t.co/Nva6gjHRIl https://t.co/sJYRNjNIqU — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So the question is not how many people have been vaccinated now but how many people were vaccinated as of say 3-4 weeks ago. And very few were in the US. In Israel, which got off to a much faster start, you arguably (there are some confounders) are seeing an impact already. https://t.co/CuqPHjoP4s — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

p.s. Is the US data starting to show any impact from vaccines? I doubt that. Per Israeli data, vaccines take ~2+ weeks to become substantially effective and then there are the usual lags beyond that (e.g. between development of symptoms and test results showing up in the data). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@pbump Yeah, although if anything it understates how important it is that we're going into this period with falling rather than rising cases. The graph on the right is a LOT better. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The CDC's forecasting agrees with this. The graph on the right shows what happens if we start out with an Rt of ~0.9 and then start to vaccinate people. The new strain slows down progress a bit and makes it take longer to get to ~0, but not so bad overall. https://t.co/in9afqxb1I https://t.co/hogvcIg0wt — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

New cases and hospitalizations are starting to fall pretty quickly in the US. Seems to be a lot of fatalism that new strains will cause a 4th (?) wave. Not necessarily true if we can vaccinate people fast enough and keep other sensible measures in place. https://t.co/dHB4t8PvUm https://t.co/kCohlGMI7G — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @NYT4thDownBot: @NateSilver538 If you scramble into the end zone on 3rd down, there is no 4th down. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

.@NYT4thDownBot? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @daveweigel: One irony about Dems having 50+1 senate seats instead of 58 - as they did in Jan 2009 - is that they can rule out compromis… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @perrybaconjr: Journalists have to get clearer about the values of our profession and clearly articulate them. For example, journalists… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I shudder to think of the impact of a whole generation of students going without in-person instruction for what will wind up being *more than a year*, especially Black, Hispanic and poor students who are more likely to have to rely on remote learning. https://t.co/ZUU2QTbdV1 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ABCPolitics: Can President Joe Biden unite the country? @NateSilver538: “I think the obvious answer is no. But I do think he has above… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@PSU_Ithaca Things were really slow at first so it seemed ambitious enough at the time Biden made it. But the pace has fortunately (and predictably IMO?) picked up enough that we should be aiming higher. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In a week that partly took place during the Trump administration, we've already met Biden's target of 1m vaccine doses/day. We need a higher target. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As an aside, the vaccine appears to take a bit longer to take effect IRL than in trials. But that's not a surprise, since trial data was ostensibly among people who were COVID- at the time of vaccination. In real life, some early positives will reflect cases acquired pre-vaccine. https://t.co/utmx7MivIE — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's a little too much pessimism out there right now. The new variants are a challenge but we have some very good vaccines. This is some real-world data from Israel showing already a ~2/3 reduction in cases ~21 days after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheStalwart @balajis It's like when people said "actually, Trump could get reelected" like it was boldly contrarian when in fact it was perhaps the most conventional take of all time. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

New York State and New York City now above-average in the share of vaccine doses distributed. But California ranks dead last among US states. https://t.co/MrxIwfTQKc https://t.co/itj5tBPYQ6 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidcho Yeah, that sounds about right. From ~mid-June onward, things picked up. But everything goes completely dead at 10pm. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JADubin5 Yeah, it's honestly hard to remember. I have found myself just randomly walking around more because it's pretty COVID-safe and there's not much else to do. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davewiner Yeah, there were some points in the summer (when NYC's COVID cases were very low) when it actually felt busier than usual. Fewer people getting away, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidcho Yep no question Midtown is quieter. Harder to say for like Chelsea or the West Village. The outdoor dining tents/pavilions/etc. make things feel a bit more lively. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Manhattan still gets a decent amount of foot traffic during the day (quieter at night) and I realized I've lost hold of my pre-pandemic baseline for certain things. On a late January afternoon in 2019 were the streets just teeming with people? Or not *that* different than this? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Neoavatara There's an emerging view that dining at restaurants may be safer than home gatherings. I buy this for outdoor dining but indoor dining seems like more of a stretch and may reflect dubious interpretations of contact-tracing data (i.e. easier to trace cases from home gatherings). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ezraklein There's also various data to suggest the new strain doesn't have quite the transmissibility advantage as originally feared, although it's confusing and experts in my feed seem divided. Good news either way that the UK has turned the corner. https://t.co/x0pti2lsI0 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Neoavatara I mean I think we probably will unless there are major supply disruptions. I worry that things could slow down though once we've made it through the ~40% of the adult population that are *eager* for vaccines. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie Do you have any sense on the time frame for that? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jbarro I think it's fine as an exercise in expectations management. And they were smart to set those expectations at a moment when people were *very* pessimistic about the vaccine rollout. But, yeah, it wasn't a particularly ambitious goal. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Maybe 1m/day (Biden's goal) is all we can manage for now. But to be clear, it's not a fast enough pace in the long term. If we were still at 1m/day on April 30 (end of Biden's first 100 days) that would be disappointing. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

That works out to ~250m Americans who'll get a vaccine. Let's say 80% are covered with 2-dose vaccines and 20% with 1-dose vaccines. That's ~500m doses. We've delivered ~20m so far so ~480m to go. There are ~240 days between now and Sept. 21 so that works out to 2 million/day. 2/ — PolitiTweet.org