Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

New York reports fewer new cases than yesterday: Today: 8147 Mon: 8658 Sun: 8327 Sat: 10841 Fri: 10482 Thu: 8669 Wed: 7917 Tuesday 3/31: 9299 Not sure about testing volume—Cuomo doesn't usually announce those numbers—though it's been fairly constant from day to day in New York. https://t.co/ty24GvY86G — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The legal questions in Wisconsin seem genuinely pretty difficult, without a lot of good options, and it's probably worth reading the Supreme Court majority opinion and dissent for background if you haven't yet. https://t.co/J4ydY5XlL5 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Decisions about how to re-open things may be a lot more difficult than decisions to shut them down. Shutting down / radically increasing social distancing was a robust policy response across a wide range of preferences and uncertainties. Re-opening is more sensitive to those. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NateDuncanNBA * If/when there is a significant class of immune people (e.g. 30% plus) then a lot of get-back-to-normal strategies become more viable because of herd immunity and we should probably pursue one of those more comprehensive strategies. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NateDuncanNBA I still think it's a weird equilibrium for like 3 reasons: * The perverse incentives I mentioned earlier. * The policy goal should probably be to help all people who are currently negative get back to having more of a life and not just immune people... (cont...) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NateDuncanNBA I think that creates some fairly perverse incentives. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias It's *almost* too good to be true in that it's arguably a little early to expect the the death curve to have flattened that much given how much of a lag there is between infection and recorded deaths. So let's see what the rest of the week brings. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@AlbertoCairo Yeah, agreed, and there can be some weird effects there. But within a week or two, we've gone from data that looked quite bad on the surface, but for which there were a few silver linings, to data that looks encouraging on the surface, but for which there are some caveats. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Actually, on second glance, there has also been flattening in the rest of the country. https://t.co/GH5WKmOFgL NY state newly-reported deaths: Mon 4/6—599 Sun 4/5—594 Sat 4/4—630 Fri 4/3—562 Thu 4/2—432 Rest of USA: Mon 4/6—583 Sun 4/5—590 Sat 4/4—722 Fri 4/3—616 Thu 4/2—652 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Meanwhile, 17% of newly-reported tests in the past 3 days have been positive, as compared with 22% in the week before that. That's good since it shouldn't be as subject to day-of-week effects. It still could be subject to NY vs. rest-of-country effects, though. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Source as usual is @COVID19Tracking. Also, there's *clearly* been a New York slowdown, which is tending to dominate the data; NY vs. rest of country may be on somewhat different trajectories. https://t.co/Abv6ItXpQx — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So, there's a lot going on here. There's been a slowdown. But also important: there may be some day-of-week effects. The last two Tuesdays were quite bad. Possible there's a backlog of cases on weekends that then finally make it into Tuesday's reporting. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Newly-reported US COVID-19 deaths: Mon 4/6—1182 Sun 4/5—1184 Sat 4/4—1352 Fri 4/3—1178 Thu 4/2—1084 Wed 4/1—954 Tue 3/31—807 Mon 3/30—511 Sun 3/29—463 Sat 3/28—435 Fri 3/27—367 Thu 3/26—263 Wed 3/25—225 Tue 3/24—204 Mon 3/23—73 Sun 3/22—126 Sat 3/21—53 Fri 3/20—59 Thu 3/19—48 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Newly-reported US COVID-19 deaths: Mon4/6—1182 Sun 4/5—1184 Sat 4/4—1352 Fri 4/3—1178 Thu 4/2—1084 Wed 4/1—954 Tue 3/31—807 Mon 3/30—511 Sun 3/29—463 Sat 3/28—435 Fri 3/27—367 Thu 3/26—263 Wed 3/25—225 Tue 3/24—204 Mon 3/23—73 Sun 3/22—126 Sat 3/21—53 Fri 3/20—59 Thu 3/19—48 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@AlbertoCairo I think they're arbitrary in the sense that you can make a good-faith case for lots of different choices, and people seem to be sticking with choices they made a few weeks ago as the situation has evolved and we've seen how those choices play out in practice. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm @mattyglesias Yeah even a table interspersing deaths per million people in US states + European countries would be decently informative. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Or (maybe better) have a bevy of charts and tables to give people a more nuanced view. But this is a case where function/interpretation has followed form when it should be the other way around. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Right, and if you do that the US comes out somewhere in the middle of the pack among NATO countries. And if the charts are not communicating that, I'm not sure they're making people more informed, even if they're well-designed aesthetically. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

People are not understanding the extent to which their perceptions of reality are being shaped by relatively arbitrary design choices made in charts like these. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Except that the trajectory is not relentless and the curve has bent a lot. And comparing the US to much smaller countries isn't that informative, especially if you're not adjusting for population. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @JustinWolfers: Over 1,000 Americans dying each day, and a relentless upward trajectory which suggests things could get (exponentially)… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I think Cuomo is also on TV a lot because his pressers are well-informed and informative and probably the best daily summary of what the on-the-ground realities of coronavirus look like that Americans are getting each day. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's almost as though the two 90%+ white states that voted first weren't representative of the broader electorate. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @FiveThirtyEight: The number of reported COVID-19 *cases* is not a very useful indicator of anything unless you also know something abou… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It also shouldn't be surprising it worked. For years the evidence was on the side of the nomination being a coalition-building exercise that punishes factional candidates. Bernie gambled on Trump 16 being a new normal. They were wrong; it was the exception to the rule. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The questions are 1) why did such an effort take place? and 2) why did it work? And I think the Sanders campaign has a lot of thinking to do about how much of an us vs. them mentality it had, and it's lack of work in building alliances across the party. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Ehh, I think there was an organized effort to stop Bernie, more or less, and those endorsements were a big part of it. And it worked. Bernie's campaign didn't think it would work, even made fun of the establishment for trying. But it worked. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's clear that things people were seeing a *lot* of symptoms by the 2nd week in March, which implies a lot of community spread was occurring ~a week before that (1st week of March). I'm curious about what was happening in late Feb. and not sure if the data is so clear on that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

That is, there wasn't some constant baseline of symptoms to measure the rise in COVID-19-like symptoms against. Instead, there was a *declining* baseline, because NYC was just finally getting over a bad year for the flu. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As an aside, while in theory you could use data on metrics such as ER visits (see below) & even Google searches (see earlier thread) to see *when* the outbreak started in NYC, it's complicated by the fact that NYC had a fairly bad flu season. https://t.co/9w6hrcMO1Y https://t.co/uN3JHROaaV — PolitiTweet.org