Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki I think it probably splits pretty closely down the middle. YouGov's polling has found about ~50% of people are still somewhat or very concerned about COVID. Gallup has a lower number, more like 40%, though that's pre-Omicron. https://t.co/fYevVRuT9h — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki Also, though, even if they're a lot less of an imposition than e.g. lockdowns, masks are a pretty big departure from normal. And so are extremely cumbersome school quarantine policies (even if they're somewhat unavoidable during Omicron). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki For one thing, people still spend a huge amount of mental bandwidth trying to calibrate their COVID risk. Personally, I think that mental effort is "worth it" during the Omicron surge. But there's a case for truly not worrying about it once vaccinated. https://t.co/ZvorncqthX — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@JamesSurowiecki I don't think effective politics necessarily requires taking a position on an issue that is actually up in the air. Rhetorically, it can be effective for politicians to say "it's time to get back to normal". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

IMO the real issue is just that the Census Bureau has long been insane to consider "San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara" a separate metro area from SF-Oakland. #MakeMSAsGreatAgain — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One lesson from 2020: people are pretty bad at anticipating the *specific scenarios* by which an election might be overturned (the popular theory back then was that "the courts" would intervene to stop the count). So take what opportunities you can to make the system more robust. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jbarro I agree that there's often a lot of excess baggage attached to these arguments. I'm making a somewhat unrelated claim, I guess, about what media the marginal voter consumes and what might persuade her that the threat is real. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jbarro These critiques would be more compelling if they talked about how the local nightly news in Albuquerque or even idk Joe Rogan covered threats to democracy (which are quite serious). But the high-prestige center-left media these guys consume largely does take them very seriously. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie Right, but there are issues re: what their parents will allow, the terms of their financial aid package (if applicable), and the inability or expense associated with moving in the middle of the year if they didn't expect this when they made living arrangements in the fall. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie For all sorts of reasons, students exercise a lot less choice over their living arrangements than faculty do. Also, faculty have a lot more protections, e.g. tenure in some cases. So I don't buy that the situations are quite the same. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie @aaronsibarium I don't know what the law here is, but ethically it seems problematic to restrict what students can do in *their* private time. I do know that 19-year-old college-sophomore me would be a brat and go get a pizza and write in the student paper about it! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@aaronsibarium The tell here is that they aren't subjecting faculty to the same restrictions, who are just as likely to transmit, at more risk to themselves, and subject the school to more disruption if they test positive. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes @michelleinbklyn Now, maybe if the city got *40%* cheaper, you'd cross some threshold where it became a better place to raise a family even for people who *didn't* care that much about city life and a shorter commute would be a nice bonus. But the big US center cities are expensive these days. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes @michelleinbklyn I guess what I'm saying is, if you don't care about city life, the city is less desirable than the suburbs and still too expensive even if it gets 20% cheaper. So in practice there aren't a lot of people who are that sensitive to commute times to the office. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes One model here is that people either highly value cosmopolitan cultural amenities or they don't. If they do, the commute isn't the main reason they live in the city center. If they don't, the suburbs still offer a cheaper and better package deal even with a longer commute. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @_cingraham: The CDC recommends you lock yourself in a room with two brothers. One only tells the truth, the other only tells lies. One… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie Yeah. It doesn't seem that hard to say something like: "You can end isolation after 10 days with improving symptoms and no test, or at any point from day 6 onward with improving symptoms and a negative test. If your symptoms aren't improving after 10 days, talk to a doctor." — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One of the better defenses of the CDC shortening the quarantine interval to 5 days (without a testing requirement) was that, while it might not have been optimal, it was at least simple. The new policy is ... anything but simple! https://t.co/4w4a2fDQTO https://t.co/ZTDbmMJE7u — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP Which is not to say coercion is *never* justified. e.g. if you could permanently end COVID by forcibly locking everyone down for some modest period like 3 weeks, I say go for it. But those solutions aren't really on the table at this point. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP I don't think it usually benefits society to impose a different risk tolerance upon it than the one it would choose for itself. And I think policies that do assume a different risk tolerance are highly likely to fail. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jbarro It's interesting on a few levels that he seems to annoy the same sort of people who got very annoyed by Pete Buttigieg. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'd also note, while you might get the impression either that NYC is plowing ahead undaunted or that it's totally shut down, neither is quite true. Everything's open but people are pumping the brakes a bit, e.g. restaurant reservation data shows a 15-20% decrease vs. pre-Omicron. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP I don't think that quite follows. My argument is that even you assume people bear all risk for themselves, lockdowns would fail a cost-benefit test according to most people's risk tolerance. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Seems increasingly likely (though by no means certain) that the center will hold in NYC. However, a close call in NYC could still portend problems elsewhere as we have more immunity and hospital capacity than most places. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP The way to do that, since there's no intrinsically right answer, is observe people's behavior, i.e. empirically derive how much they're willing to ↑ risk of death for ↑ quality of life. When people have run those numbers, COVID lockdowns come out as a big negative. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP Closing schools, not being able to see family, friends or romantic partners in person, severely restricting travel, closing cultural institutions and activities and businesses that many people derive joy and fulfillment from... it's a lot more than just a few plates of nachos. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP The attempts I've seen to do this have mostly concluded that lockdowns were not worth it once you consider social costs (e.g. reduction in quality of life). https://t.co/1NQXrNo0Zu — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias Maybe not that germane, but one thing I'm curious about is how strong that effect is once you control for partisanship. In some surveys, for instance, the position of Black voters on schools was very similar to that of Biden voters. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@electricalWSOP It's acknowledging that safety exists along a spectrum and nothing is perfectly safe, but the social costs of extended closures are very high and at some point begin to outweigh the risks. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Not only about schools, but I think it was noteworthy how reopening things sometimes came to be framed as an "experiment", when gathering in person is very much the default condition and extended closures of schools, social activities, businesses, etc. is the experiment. https://t.co/voNSFwrbHm — PolitiTweet.org