Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And, yeah, it gets more complicated if you look at partial measures, what cities were doing before statewide actions, etc. But not necessarily in a way that makes the narrative simpler, e.g. NYC was taking a lot of half-measures also. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

To be clear: NY effed up and even 3 days (difference between CA and NY) can matter a lot. But for many reasons, when places shut down and how bad their outbreaks were is likely to be a messy correlation. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Here are the dates in each state when either stay-at-home orders were implemented or nonessential services were closed, whichever came first. (In NY, these happened on the same day.) https://t.co/VJRDoRe82e — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's a fair amount of misremembered/revisionist narratives about when places closed down and how much that correlates with the scale of their outbreaks. California was quite on the ball. But NY closed earlier than many states, including other West Coast states like WA & OR. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Also read this very comprehensive story from @mlipsitch on many dimensions of immunity related to COVID-19, which scientists are still learning about, but is probably more complicated than "get it once and you're immune for life". https://t.co/VKIyTMK2Eu — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

To the people who love to retweet scary headlines about COVID-19 "reactivating" or "re-infecting" people, please read this. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

"It's hard to win a party's primary when running against that party" is such an obvious flaw in the Sanders campaign's thinking that it probably needs to be the jumping-off point for any and all postmortems. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One of the more inescapable themes of the Democratic primary was that Twitter is not real life. So I'm not really sure that we should take what certain Very Online people say as being representative of Sanders supporters overall, the vast majority of whom will vote for Biden. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @trvrb: There is a lot of Twitter chatter surrounding a rumor that circulation of #COVID19 in California in fall 2019 has resulted in he… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @thehowie: Even accounting for the lack of reporting by many states (which is, of itself, unacceptable), we are at a seemingly semi-perm… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is a fairly decent report. However, note that Sundays have typically been slow days for reporting deaths, as have Mondays (perhaps even more true with the holidays this weekend). So one probably can't assume that the decline in death tolls is real, yet; wait for midweek. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking: Newly-reported deaths: Today: 1,564 Yesterday: 1,867 One week ago (4/5): 1,175 Newly-reported cases: T: 29K Y: 30K 4/5: 26K Newly-reported tests: T: 140K Y: 136K 4/5: 123K Share of tests positive: T: 21% Y: 22% 4/5: 21% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The thing is, testing/tracing is *so* much better than the alternatives (either keeping the entire economy shut down for 6-18 months or watching 100000s die) that even if you think governments are quite kludgy and even incompetent, they may find their way there eventually. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If that's the case, it would call for short-term pessimism re: most counties' ability to implement enough testing and tracing, etc. in time to get the economy revving up with the next 2 months. But it might also call for some medium-term optimism, perhaps, for the summer/fall. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The lesson of governmental responses to COVID-19 so far would seem to be roughly "governments eventually do the right thing, but it takes them longer than it should". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Mostly what we're hoping for is evidence that US-style social distancing, in places where it's in effect, is enough to get R below 1. If R is *about* or a little above 1, you could have a long plateau and a late peak. If it's under 1, you should begin to get a decline. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yeah, this is fair. The numbers holding steady overall because they're rising in some places but declining in others is different than if they're plateauing everywhere. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

* Hope is not the same thing as "expect". I don't know what to expect, exactly. But as someone who has been watching this stuff closely: holding steady this past week probably qualified as mildly good news. By a week from now, merely holding steady might count as mildly bad news. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Given when social distancing went into place, we're getting to the point—within the next week or so—where we should really hope* to see the number of new US cases (controlling for testing volume) not merely plateau but turn down. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Countries that pursued (Sweden, the Netherlands) or flirted with (UK) a "herd immunity" strategy are seeing quite a lot of people die. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

FWIW, here's how the US compares to EU + UK countries in the number of first-wave deaths per capita that are eventually projected to occur, per @IHME_UW https://t.co/aK6UuJThmA — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A decent take is: The US could have done quite well with this because we have a lot of natural advantages—empowered and largely competent states/localities, good hospitals, innovative private sector, etc—but because of Trump, we squandered those & wound up in middle of the pack. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A couple of things to be mindful of: 1) Federal government response is only one factor in how well a country responds, especially in a federalist system like the US; 2) There is likely a fair amount of "luck", based on when initial outbreaks were seeded in Jan./Feb. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ryanmatsumoto1: Biden wins the Alaska Democratic Primary 55.3% to 44.7% in the final round of ranked choice voting. Here's a chart sho… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

* Last Saturday was a weird day reporting-wise, with a big backlog of mostly negative tests were reported from California. So overall, the phrase "holding pattern" comes to mind. Several days in a row with similar numbers. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking: Newly-reported deaths: Today: 1,851 Yesterday: 2,064 One week ago (4/4): 1,353 Newly-reported cases: T: 31K Y: 34K 4/4*: 34K Newly-reported tests: T: 137K Y: 154K 4/4*: 229K Share of tests positive: T: 22% Y: 22% 4/4*: 15% — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ricpuglisi: @TheStalwart @Alicia_Smith19 I guess that three factors might play a joint role: 1) more tests per day on milder cases as… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So why the hell would you do that? Well, if you think it's inevitable that a large fraction of the population is *eventually* going to get infected sooner or later, you might want to "get it over with". I think that's a big mistake, but that's basically what Sweden is doing. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

What I don't totally understand about Sweden is whether this is the outcome they were expecting or not. If you do deliberately half-assed social distancing (not trying to get R < 1) then inevitably a lot of people are going to get infected and die. https://t.co/8rHDdGBQ14 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie Yep. It's amazing (not in a good way) that so many people are still testing positive. But trajectory has looked better lately. — PolitiTweet.org