Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's still way too much presumption of competence and savviness in White House reporting. These articles often presume that whatever Trump is doing, it involves some sort of clever political motivation, instead of that he's in over his head and making it up as he goes along. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I don't know, a more robust response to coronavirus would likely be much better for Trump's re-election prospects than whatever he's been doing. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@maggiekb1 That article was like triply irresponsible. Described the findings, some of which are fairly banal, in the scariest possible terms. Didn't talk to many people outside the project. Didn't emphasize the degree to which it was a preprint, contextualize with other research, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A lot of this news coverage winds up *punishing* states for doing more testing, because if you do more testing, you find more cases and therefore get worse headlines. So it's not just bad reporting; it creates poor incentives since we need more tests. https://t.co/VK7rCgBNMc — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Adjusting for testing volume, you likely get a slight overall decline outside of NYC. That's not great, because (i) it's only a slight decline; (ii) some areas *are* likely increasing; (iii) social distancing is relaxing. Still, that's a much more complete and accurate story. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This article literally doesn't mention how the amount of testing has increased by ~60% within in the past few weeks. That does make the situation particularly great, but it's context that can't be omitted in any discussion of cases increasing/decreasing. https://t.co/JUY0J4fFJc https://t.co/9H8M2qd8Xa — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In Montana you still have household contacts and other close personal contacts, and those are the ones that likely matter the most. Incidental contacts vary a lot more, but they are only part of the picture and perhaps not the primary means of infection, especially post-lockdown. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

That's about what you get based on our urbanization index, which seems to fit the data pretty well. I think it's not the *number* of contacts above a certain threshold that matters so much as the *amount* of contact, which is a function of space X time. https://t.co/A3PMwQa5vJ — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Also, if you're looking at density, you really need to use some of natural logarithm. NYC might have, I don't know, 50-100% more COVID-relevant social interaction than Montana per capita. It doesn't have 15000% more or whatever you'd get from the raw density numbers. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As an aside, our alternative measure of population density, which measures the average number of people who live within a 5 mile radius of you, appears to do better with coronavirus dynamics than the traditional ones. https://t.co/1tFbvumiRF — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yeah, and keep in mind that the Apple data shows the *relative* change in movement. So let's say, ordinarily in Montana, you have 60 contacts with people per week and in NYC, you have 100. If you reduce them by 17% in Montana but 50% in NYC, you wind up with 50 in each place. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Can't believe the NYT made this their print headline. There is no evidence this is some sort of official White Hous… https://t.co/48hSfR9gz6 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @No_Little_Plans @jaycaspiankang @canzhiye @PlusEVAnalytics There was also a lot of the COVID-will-completely-overwhelm-the-American-health-care-system takes at the time, with models that assumed essentially no social distancing and huge peaks into May/June still being treated as base-case scenarios. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @No_Little_Plans @jaycaspiankang @canzhiye @PlusEVAnalytics Yeah, they were filling a vacuum. I think they were doing a lot of the back-of-the-envelope stuff that a lot of people were doing in terms of figuring out when cases might peak. I don't think they thought enough, obviously, about what the other side of the curve would look like. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @No_Little_Plans @jaycaspiankang @canzhiye @PlusEVAnalytics I think an underrated dynamic here is the quality/speed trade-off. True subject-matter experts tend to be i) meticulous, but meticulousness takes time and ii) face more reputational risk, which may make them more deliberate about weighing in. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickKristof Yeah, that makes sense. It does seem like you can put slightly less weight on some of the extreme tail outcomes in both directions. Certainly many of the positive tails, though maybe some of the negative tails, too. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickKristof I find it hard to be a good news consumer on vaccines and therapies. I know to take a default position that any one early-stage candidate is unlikely to pan out. But I don't have a good sense for whether overall it's going better or worse than experts expected. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickKristof Yeah, that seems right. I'm a little less hopeful about seasonality (though it may have *some* effects) and a little less worried about immunity (though it may be quite complicated and there are some downside risks) than I was a month or so ago. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @FiveThirtyEight: According to a growing body of research, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is almost certainly a naturally o… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

—Claims of "re-infection" were overblown. But almost by definition, too soon to know *that* much about long-term immunity. —Still a fairly wide range of uncertainty in the infection fatality rate. —Not sure what the consensus is on the mutations question. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

—Too early to say much about treatments. My vague sense is that the treatment news is mildly more bearish than I expected, but too soon to draw conclusions. —Same for vaccines except news seems vaguely bullish instead. —Seems like we still don't know tons about seasonality. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Was reading back through this @NickKristof column and one thing that strikes me is how many of the big important questions about coronavirus we still don't very much know about. https://t.co/5SkoqXuIsm https://t.co/ZdAblK3S9r — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Not if we have a zombie problem. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias If you extend it out though we get negative deaths in December. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Like this took me 45 seconds and it seems to match the description of the "cubic model" quite well. https://t.co/s91O6CTkw1 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I would bet $538 that the White House's "cubic model" is literally just an MS-EXCEL trendline with a third-degree (cubic) polynomial. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen I mean technically every little thing helps a bit, but it's kind of a rounding error until maybe 10-15% of the country has antibodies and we're likely a long ways from that (except in NYC/New Orleans/Detroit). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@CarlBialik Masks, sure. Maybe within a few weeks, we'll be able to look at how much mask-wearing there was in different states at different times and how much of an effect it had. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Another spin on this: if we had ways OTHER than social distancing to lower R (test/trace/isolate/etc), we could perhaps reduce social distancing quite a bit, so long as people were generally being prudent and we tackled some of the low-hanging fruit (e.g. avoid mass gatherings). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Plus, distancing will likely erode further. I don't think people should *necessarily* expect to see an *explosion* of new cases. It may lead to a long plateau at high numbers, though. Maybe we get lucky and weather offsets some of this, although then there are problems in fall. — PolitiTweet.org