Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One way to look at this: until the past couple of weeks, sit-down restaurants in TX/GA/FL were operating at maybe 10-20% capacity and returning only 10-20% back to normal (with people being careful, using socially distanced seating, etc.) was never likely to cause a huge spike. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In other words, the flip side to not getting too excited about these numbers is not freaking out too much if states report big one-day totals tomorrow or Thursday, which is likely to happen in at least some places if their reporting is backlogged. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is the fewest reported cases in a day since 3/25, but that's probably at least in part because states are slow to report at the end of a 3-day weekend, which likely means the numbers will bounce back tomorrow and Thursday. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US #'s via @COVID19Tracking **Likely impacted by holiday weekend** Newly reported deaths Today: 629 Yesterday: 523 One week ago (5/19): 1,430 Newly reported cases T: 16K Y: 19K 5/19: 21K Newly reported tests T: 302K Y: 441K 5/19: 397K Positive test rate T: 5% Y: 4% 5/19: 5% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ameliatd: We surveyed 31 leading economists about where they think the economy is heading. The results were pretty bleak. My story with… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Two interesting papers. The claim of the latter paper—that pessimism about COVID-19 begets fatalism that reduces compliance with social distancing—is an experimental rather than empirical result. I'd be more persuaded by empirical evidence, but it's an interesting conjecture. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As states reopen, not enough talk about early indicators for detecting where there may be an uptick in spread. Anything from sewer data to thermometer data to Google search data for symptoms could potentially be helpful and quicker than waiting for test results. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@LPDonovan Very plausible! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's also a question of what this will look like in practice to voters if the improvement in the unemployment rate mostly comes from businesses hiring back after furloughs/layoffs but also a conspicuous number of other small businesses having been forced to close permanently. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ernietedeschi Right, and am saying despite those headlines, Trump will likely be worse off with a -40% (annualized) in Q2 and a +21.5% in Q3 versus if both quarters had been 2.5%. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If anything, being strictly empirical might push you toward assuming that voters' perceptions of the economy are somewhat lagging, e.g. Bush didn't get any credit for the improving economy in 1992, but again these findings are based on small samples. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The best strategy is therefore to use a broad basket of economic indicators over a broad range of time horizons. By that measure, voters' assessments of the economy would likely still be fairly negative on balance by November even with a haflway recovery. https://t.co/5WOUCIoGNe — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And to an extent this is an intractable question because we don't have a large enough sample of presidential elections to know exactly (or even all that precisely) how voters evaluate the economy. Models that claim some particular indicator is supreme are bad/p-hacked/overfit. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's true that a partial recovery to 9% would be better for Trump than getting stuck at 15%. But 9% is still quite high, and voters could also compare to 3.5% or wherever it had been before. The literature on what time horizon voters use to evaluate the economy is not very clear. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So, Democrats are worried that a partial, V- or check-shaped recovery (e.g. unemployment goes from 3.5% pre-covid to 15% mid-covid to 9% by November) will help Trump. I tend to think this is somewhat misguided, empirically. https://t.co/Xke9uP3Ax8 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Cases and tests are not impacted as much by week vs. weekend effects. In fact, a record number of tests were reported today. And we had a record low positive test rate of 4.3%. So that's encouraging, though it comes after a few days of not-so-great numbers. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Reporting on deaths is typically slow on Mondays, and that's perhaps especially likely to be the case on a holiday weekend. Thus, there will likely be a correction midweek, perhaps a sharp one. Still, 523 is the fewest deaths reported in a day since March 29. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US numbers via @COVID19Tracking⁠—may be affected by holiday weekend. Newly reported deaths Today: 523 Yesterday: 654 One week ago (5/18): 786 Newly reported cases T: 19K Y: 21K 5/18: 20K Newly reported tests T: 441K Y: 379K 5/18: 346K Positive test % T: 4% Y: 5% 5/18: 6% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ABCPolitics: Black Americans and Latinos are nearly three times more likely to personally know someone who has died from coronavirus th… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Of course, because there are lags between policy and behavioral changes and the data, there's the risk of miscalculation. You think you're managing R to 1 but ... oops, turns out it's 1.5! The risk I worry most about comes in the fall if there are strong weather-related effects. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

How could you get there? If states are willing to maintain enough social distancing to prevent R from being >1, but not more. So they'll try to prevent *increases*, but they'll tolerate plateaus. Some states (e.g. NY) explicitly have a policy of trying to keep R <=1, in fact. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm uncertain about a lot of things re: what will happen in the US on COVID. But some of the models show the chance of a long plateau... i.e. once we get down to ~1,000 deaths/day, we might stay there for a while. That seems plausible to me. https://t.co/Qxu8rSPoV1 https://t.co/ZVlUvzdzJL — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Whether a state is technically "open" doesn't seem to matter much in predicting driving mobility. I'd previously found the number of COVID deaths in a state was predictive (people staying home more in states with high per-capita death rates) but that effect seems to have faded. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

What predicts mobility? Basically three things. Partisanship (people in Trump states moving more relative to their pre-COVID baseline), weather (people in states with a larger summer vs. winter temperature change moving more) and urbanization (people in rural states moving more). https://t.co/liW8TI2LDM — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This was inevitable, I suppose, but big increase in the number of people driving around in the US this weekend in almost every state (we're the gray line). Not much increase in transit use, however. https://t.co/32iSFYgSGd https://t.co/JnR1qgXaqS — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's a fine line between learning by example and learning by outlier. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Still, this is typical of recent reports. We've been seeing a meaningful week-over-week decline in deaths almost every day. That's certainly good news! But, cases and the positive test rate have been flat over the past several days rather than declining. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I say "be careful" because reporting of deaths is typically slower on weekends, and that's especially likely to be the case on a holiday weekend. So while this is the fewest deaths reported since 3/30, we'll likely see an uptick on Wednesday or so once we're past the holiday. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking. Be careful with this one. Newly-reported deaths Today: 654 Yesterday: 1,091 One week ago (5/17): 839 Newly-reported cases T: 21K Y: 21K 5/17: 21K Newly-reported tests T: 379K Y: 365K 5/17: 403K Positive test rate: T: 6% Y: 6% 5/17: 5% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @meganranney: Here's a short list of things we do and don't yet know about #COVID19. — PolitiTweet.org