Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Another related thing here is the pre-COVID American culture of going to work and keeping social commitments when you're mildly (or perhaps even not-so-mildly) sick. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Huh. For purely narrow and selfish reasons, this makes things easier from a standpoint of building election models/interactives since Amash was sort of on the border between a "significant" 3rd-party candidate and someone you can just treat as part of "others receiving votes". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Crimealytics Negative cases, just as predicted by the cubic model. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin I guess the irony is that some of the hard-hit areas (e.g. NYC) haven't had too much problem getting a fairly steep decline. It's not entirely clear how much of that is because a nontrivial fraction of population already got it or because of greater compliance with distancing. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin I think it would have been politically viable in some of the hard-hit areas, as it was in parts of Europe. Tougher in Utah or what not. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@dandrezner But yeah, you're pushing on a lot of frontiers were the cost-benefit isn't great in the long run. It's just potentially quite beneficial to get R down to 0.6 or 0.7 for a few weeks if you can find a way to swing it in the short run. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@dandrezner Even the strictest lockdowns keep grocery stores and pharmacies open, sometimes with restrictions with how many people from each household can visit per week. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If you had to do it all over again, then having a very brief (~3 weeks) but very strict lockdown to crush the curve as much as possible (R=0.6 or 0.7), followed by a laxer, more sustainable lockdown (R=0.8 or 0.9), might be optimal public policy given political constraints. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One point of context that I don't think gets raised enough is that the US lockdowns (even in say NY & CA) were never *that* strict. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@SeanTrende Yeah, there's too little focus on the places (meat-packing plans, prisons, nursing homes) where there are very bad outbreaks among vulnerable populations and seemingly few efforts to ameliorate them. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

At first, this was an understandable mistake. Most people haven't covered this sort of story before and the data is less straightforward than you might assume. But it's been 2+ months now. It's now a lazy, careless mistake. And it's increasingly verging into being dishonest. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There are still *way* too many stories about big spikes in cases when the cause of those spikes was a big increase in tests. And remember, it's a good thing when states start doing more tests! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @oliverdarcy: Friday's edition of the @ReliableSources is out (with a *slightly* new look): https://t.co/3sVfeF9f2R Inside: @paulkrugma… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @berkey11: Cards are in the air and we are near the cap. Steam will be live shortly with @NateSilver538 first on the guest list — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Or just move all 330 million Americans to Maine in the summer and Arizona in the winter. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias I continue to worry about whether the decision by some public-health communicators to downplay weather, even though the evidence seems to support decent-sized weather effects, could cause problems in the fall. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen Yeah, we're pretty much in the ideal time right now for outdoor activity, but it's going to get oppressively hot in some parts of the country soon. So we may need to decompose weather effects from indoor/outdoor effects. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But it's also possible the effects could be something like "cases decline slowly, when they would have declined quickly if measures had remained in place" or "cases slowly increase, when they would have slowly declined". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Could we see spikes? Sure, it's possible. The magnitude of the effects on transmission rates in going from stricter to medium social distancing (no places are going totally "back to normal" yet) is uncertain. So are all of the parameters in the tweet above. Lots of uncertainty. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Moreover, the re-openings are coming at a time when there are other, mostly helpful factors in play —Mask-wearing ↑ —Warmer weather may help —Testing and tracing ↑ —Susceptible population is a bit lower in some hard-hit cities/groups where decent #'s of people already had it — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Of course, things could turn around, in either direction. When might we start to see the effect of re-openings in the data? Actually, it would probably be gradual. Re-openings began as early as Apr. 20 and will continue through May/June, and states do them in regions/stages. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This has become the new normal, for now. A slow decline in cases and deaths, a fairly steep increase in tests, and a fairly steep decline in the positive test rate. The degree to which you consider this good news or not will depend on your priors. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking: Newly reported deaths Today: 1,645 Yesterday: 1,741 One week ago (5/8): 1,760 Newly reported cases T: 26K Y: 25K 5/8: 28K Newly reported tests T: 378K Y: 367K 5/8: 299K Positive test rate T: 7% Y: 7% 5/8: 9% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

From the department of spurious correlations: No state or territory that voted for Michael Bloomberg has *any* coronavirus cases. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Also, sports leagues should work on ways to robustify the supply chains so that the number of tests increase among the general population as well. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One question for the experts on here: Do we know much about the regional spread of other coronaviruses? (i.e. the ones that just cause a cold?) Seems like if certain regions had much higher prevalence, that could provide for some interesting evidence for/against cross-immunity. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

More encouraging findings on immunity here. If there is some degree of cross-immunity with other coronaviruses (speculative but this study seems supportive of the idea) that would also be interesting. https://t.co/LqbbiG9hOp — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheStalwart @DKThomp @conorsen There are degrees of out-of-hand-ness but one good thing is that the *complete* lack of awareness and preparation that we had in January/February/March is unlikely to be replicated, meaning that slopes wouldn't be quite as steep. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

My criteria for picking best states has always been "what if you were forced to live in one state for the rest of your life and could never leave", which is pretty important to my answer here. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MarkHarrisNYC Most transmission is likely through close contacts, studies seem to say, so while some cases are going to be missed, especially in a city like NYC where there are a lot of causal contacts, alerting close contacts is liable to help a lot. — PolitiTweet.org