Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

To put it another way, while it may be a good idea to continue the lockdown—indeed, I think it still is a good and necessary idea, at least for most places!—the mandate for the *original* lockdown may be waning, and pro-lockdown folks should be aware of that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Most people did *not* expect the lockdowns to last only a few weeks, even though the initial time frame for stay-at-home orders was a few weeks in many places. 58% *did* expect them to end within a month or two, however. Now that it's May, it's been "a month or two", roughly. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Apart from warmer weather, it's also worth keeping in mind that we're getting to the point in time when a lot of people expected the lockdowns to end. Here is some polling data on that: https://t.co/VcIixdC1mu https://t.co/11bEE4srrR — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

When I've seen smart technical criticisms of IHME, I've tried to amplify/add to those (see below). It's also not my field, though, so as an outsider, my comments are going be more tempered than they would be for say an election or NBA model. https://t.co/ji4cAJgpjV — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I do express empathy with IHME in the interview—and have expressed it on Twitter too—because 1) building models is hard 2) criticizing them is easy and 3) some of the criticisms are dumb. But I don't think I've offered much praise for the technical details behind their approach. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is a weird comment, Eric, and not an accurate characterization of the interview w/IHME. People should listen for themselves. A lot of our questions are implicitly or explicitly critical. But it is an interview, not a critique (or an endorsement). https://t.co/6pGN4XOJcX — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@kmedved @FrankDGonzo @Luzius It's also worth thinking about whether there are correlations between the likelihood of acquiring COVID-19 and the likelihood of a severe outcome, conditional upon acquiring it. If so then the IFR and the hospitalization rate could change over time. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The positive test rate continues to S L O W L Y decline but that's really a blend of a fairly clear decline in some places, and no decline (or an ↑) in others. It remains important to account for testing volume—otherwise you're basically punishing states for doing more testing. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Unfortunately, I don't think anybody should necessarily feel too optimistic about the lower-than-usual number of reported deaths today, since reporting is often slower on weekends. Note that last Sunday was a slow day too but was then followed by 2K+ on Tues/Wed/Thurs. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking: Newly reported deaths: Today: 1,158 Yesterday: 1,651 One week ago (4/26): 1,095 Newly reported cases: T: 26K Y: 30K 4/26: 27K Newly reported tests: T: 237K Y: 265K 4/26: 206K Positive test rate: T: 11% Y: 11% 4/26: 13% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It may not be too long before New York has a lower positive test rate than the rest of the country. It was at 13% (state) and 15% (city) in data released today. US as a whole was at 11% yesterday. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But Wuhan had a stricter lockdown than Western countries have implemented. It also had centralized quarantine, which may have a huge effect. There are perhaps also questions about how reliable the Chinese data is. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This very well-written (and right about a lot of stuff) post from March implies that we could get R to 0.5 or 0.6 without too much of a problem, noting that it had been around 0.3 in Wuhan. https://t.co/m1IhFoVcMQ — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

On the one hand, there were people who understood "flatten the curve" to mean merely spreading cases out over a longer period of time to avoid overwhelming ICUs (e.g. R>1). OTOH, there were people who thought we could **crush** the curve via social distancing when we couldn't. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I would note that in terms of taking *formal* stop for re-opening, Western Europe is pretty similar to the US timeline as a whole. (It varies from country to country just like it varies from state to state.) So these formal steps may not matter as much as the tone leaders set. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

p.s. We are now seeing an increasing split in the mobility data between the US and other countries—meaning, Americans are giving up on social distancing sooner— although Canada is an exception and their data looks a lot like ours. https://t.co/NONii8M4Ia — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jodyavirgan Yeah, there are a lot of mixed messages if you look at what different states/cities are doing, to the point where there's ridiculous stuff like a state park being open and a city park across the road being closed. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And people's behavior *is* political, at least in part. So we're-all-in-this-together messaging is perhaps going to be better than anything that smacks of partisanship. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Personally, if I were a governor, I wouldn't want to fight too many battles over outdoor activity. Sure, you need find ways to avoid crowds/bottlenecks and remind about masks/distancing. But people have a strong impulse to be outdoors this time of year and it may be fairly safe. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In certain ways, it's good that weather seems to have big effects. If people just want to be outdoors more and that's what most of the increased mobility reflects, that is probably less risky than other activities (assuming good social distancing is being practiced, etc.) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

People are moving around less in states with more COVID-19 deaths, but it's not a huge effect. Whether a state is formally re-open doesn't seem to matter that much, but note that openness/closure is correlated with these other variables so that makes it a bit tricky to evaluate. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Results? The most important variables, as I teased at, are Trump's margin of victory and weather. People are moving around more in red states, and they're moving around more in states where spring/summer weather is much nicer than winter weather. https://t.co/ST9UnkL1fw — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

5) Weather, measured as the change from average summer temperatures to average winter temperatures in a state. The change is what counts here since Apple's baseline mobility data was captured in the winter. It shows which states are warming up the most. https://t.co/tBJCamrIfC — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

For explanatory variables, I looked at the following: 1) Where a state is on the spectrum between "open" and "closed", per the NYT: https://t.co/7FrL01jcwB 2) The number of COVID-19 deaths per-capita. 3) Trump's margin of victory in '16. 4) Urbanization: https://t.co/GONEVDLgSe — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Data: I ran a regression where mobility is the dependent variable. Specifically, I used Apple's mobility numbers for driving (the only data they have at the state level). This measures the RELATIVE change vs. a state's pre-COVID mobility in Jan/Feb. https://t.co/32iSFYgSGd — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's a fairly big blue/red state divide in where mobility is increasing/social distancing is decreasing. Also weather matters a lot. Formal opening vs. re-opening may matter some, but perhaps less. Quick THREAD — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JayCostTWS Cuomo has been pretty sensible about outdoor activity and generally done a decent job of picking his battles IMO. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JayCostTWS Agree with your broader points, but these people in Central Park aren't violating any laws and aren't necessarily even violating any social guidelines and a lot of this just people on Twitter being scolds because stuff sucks right now and they need outlets to direct anger toward. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I thought we'd gotten past the scolding-people-by-posting-a-photo-of-people-being-outside-WHILE-PRACTICING-APPROPRIATE-SOCIAL-DISTANCING phase but clearly we haven't. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Also, I wish we knew more about how much these activities have the potential to increase R. Some evidence seems to suggest that outdoors is safer than indoors, for instance. We'll find out, I guess, because I don't expect most people will stay inside by themselves all summer. — PolitiTweet.org