Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie Yeah... Manhattan's a few days ahead of Brooklyn which is a few days ahead of the rest of the city. And cases outside of the NYC metro are still rising sharply and could have a ways to go. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Calling it a "big rebound" is on the verge of misleading. Here's the actual data. The numbers in NYC have been pretty flat for a week or so now. Cases have been bouncing around a bit based mostly on how many tests are processed on a given day. https://t.co/NhlUAF6xeY https://t.co/RWeQ0G74hI — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery @DennisDoubleday @JamesSurowiecki You seem extremely concerned with social media dunks and not very concerned with evaluating on the effects these policies had on children and college students. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery @DennisDoubleday @JamesSurowiecki I think COVID polices such as school closures have been extremely damaging to children and I think it would be unethical if I didn't express that and I don't really care if it pisses people off. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery @DennisDoubleday @JamesSurowiecki It's extraordinarily weird that liberal pundits/editors are downplaying the importance of high-quality education. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery @DennisDoubleday @JamesSurowiecki I said they were >= worse than Iraq based on the current evidence and I'm happy to stand behind that. I surely may be wrong. I'm often wrong! But medium-to-long term school closures for 10s of millions of children is an enormously consequential, going-to-war-level decision. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DennisDoubleday @JamesSurowiecki @ClaraJeffery I think short-term closures due to staff shortages or just because Omicron is likely to flow thorough the population quickly are reasonable. My issue is that keeping schools closed was treated as an acceptable *medium-to-long-term option* when it was a huge disaster. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki @bendreyfuss @JamesFallows @ClaraJeffery In other words, I'm *fairly* confident that this was a bad decision, but I'm *extremely* confident that this was an *important* decision and one that's worthy of a lot of review and debate. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki @bendreyfuss @JamesFallows @ClaraJeffery Absolutely, that would be important evidence to consider. My original point was just that school closures were an extremely high-stakes decision. Not "Welp! That happened! But let's move on!". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@bendreyfuss @JamesSurowiecki @JamesFallows @ClaraJeffery Yeah, exactly. If the research finds that "Actually, school sucks! So students missing school was awesome!", then I'll revise. But so far, the evidence points toward this being a really bad decision. And it's a high-stakes, tantamount-to-going-to-war decision. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki @ClaraJeffery Quite possibly yes! About half of school districts were remote in Fall 2020. https://t.co/VaxPpe6P9t — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@BGrueskin @ClaraJeffery @MollyJongFast If I'm making a specific point among debates among liberal elites, running a poll on Twitter is an extremely good way to test that! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesFallows @ClaraJeffery I buy that there was considerable uncertainty. But sometimes, large mistakes are made under conditions of uncertainty, even by good, well-meaning people. And we shouldn't deny that these were *extremely* consequential decisions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery Personally, I'd have kept schools open and given teachers hazard pay and lifetime eligibility for Medicare. Because I think high-quality education is extremely valuable and depriving it to tens of millions of children was a huge mistake. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery Maybe you should talk to some parents in Virginia, basically a blue state at this point, who disliked Trump but voted for Glenn Youngkin. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery Personally, I think the returns to high-quality education, both from a societal and individual standpoint, are extremely high. And I think the literature mostly supports that. I used to think this was a standard liberal viewpoint but apparently it isn't any longer. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery I'd also say you should talk to some parents from outside the liberal bubble to see how they feel about them. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery I'm saying the magnitude of societal impacts from these decisions is extremely large and it's ridiculous to suggest it's offensive to talk about that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery I guess you can say "well, it was worth it, because we prevented some number of COVID cases". Or you can say "we were operating under the fog of uncertainty and sometimes people fuck up under those circumstances". But these were VERY high-stakes, high-magnitude decisions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery There are about 50 million schoolchildren and 20 million college students in the US. They experienced a spectrum of disruptions from modest to severe. The total amount of learning loss was extremely large. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery Yeah, I think depriving tens of millions of school children of an in-person education for a year or longer is absolutely on that magnitude. No question. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ClaraJeffery Suppose you think that school closures were a disastrous, invasion-of-Iraq magnitude (or perhaps greater) policy decision. Shouldn't that merit some further reflection? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen Hanks-Gobert Day. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Actually let's test this. Please skip the poll if neither Hillary or Bernie are your cup of tea... COVID hawk = favor maintaining or increasing restrictions, at least for some period of time COVID dove = favor eliminating most restrictions, other than maybe some vax stuff — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@BenjySarlin Does it track with views on COVID policy, though? I still have to watch it! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The two biggest subjects of liberal infighting today are COVID policy and "cancel culture" or whatever the hell you want to call it. Neither one really tracks with the Bernie-Hillary wars very clearly in who's in which camp, so that's kind of a refreshing change at least. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@katrosenfield Yeah, maybe a better way to put it is that some people just aren't that social, and that's totally OK. I do worry about people who would like to be social but have trouble making social ties and those may have frayed during the pandemic. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@katrosenfield Yeah, I can imagine that there's a certain type of liberal small down that's been badly impacted. I think the single deadest place I went to since the pandemic began was Asheville, NC. Though, that was last January before widely-available vaccines. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@katrosenfield My theory is that most of these people would be happier if they moved to the suburbs but they don't want to admit it to themselves. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@felixsalmon @JamesSurowiecki It's weird how we all live our own social microcosms. I'd say 90% of my friends *would* happily walk unmasked into an indoor crowded bar. Well, it's probably dipped to more like 50% now. But will be back up to 90% after the Omicron surge wanes. — PolitiTweet.org