Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Not really any sign of a decline in ICU availability n New York City, despite a very large number of COVID cases. For comparison, ICU bed availability had fallen to about 15% in late March, 2020. Data from here: https://t.co/XqEqI93ZCQ https://t.co/cdjct6tGHM — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I mean... you've kind of got to work the country you've got. The US is extremely individualistic and not particularly risk-averse. It's also extremely polarized. None of that is going to change overnight. Public health strategies probably need to accept those as constraints. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@awprokop I think I could be convinced that people should be more careful to avoid contact with others when they have the flu, or even a bad cold. But, these are not decisions that pervade every aspects of our lives or occupy a ton of mental bandwidth, as COVID has over the past 2 years. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@LPDonovan I think you could have a preference cascade. A lot of my liberal and moderate friends are "over it" (though some are temporarily being more cautious during the Omisurge). And Dem electeds are much less enthusiastic about restrictions than people on Twitter. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm As someone who was an early adopter of "get vaccinated then get on with your life" (yes, with various cave… https://t.co/ERUfqerxHU — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm Yeah. I think people tend to miss the gap between the stricter NPIs that public health people and liberal thought leaders might advocate for (although, *that's* changing too) and the relatively laissez-faire attitude favored by most Democratic politicians since spring 2021. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One difference is that Bush had good reason to think a perpetual war on terror mentality would benefit him politically in 2002/2004, whereas I doubt that Biden believes that a "perpetual war on COVID" mentality will help him in 2022/2024. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A fun question for prediction markets might be: will there be a federal mask requirement in place on domestic flights as of Nov. 8, 2022? (i.e. Election Day.) I think I'd make 'No' about the 3:2 favorite, but wouldn't put a lot of money on it. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I think this is where most D politicians are headed. Or maybe a slight variation: vaccinate to protect yourself, test when exposed to protect others. Will be a better message when there are more/cheaper tests. The question is what happens if we get some nasty new variant. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If you go by admissions rather than the # of people in the hospital, last winter was producing about 2.25x as many hospitalizations *per case* in NYC. That may be a better metric since it's a bit less lagging. Although, it won't reflect any benefit from shorter hospital stays. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I should note that this data from NY State reflects the number of people currently in the hospital *not* the number of admissions. So if hospital stays are shorter during Omicron, as in South Africa, that will be reflected in this data. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And this is probably best source for hospitalization data in NYC. Good and bad news. Bad news: they're growing fast, will keep growing. Good news: *relative to the number of cases* lagged by a week, hospitalizations about 5-6x lower than last winter. https://t.co/6zj13JUC1g https://t.co/Agj6XiFRcR — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ScottGottliebMD: @NateSilver538 The wave in NYC indeed started in Manhattan and spread to the outer boroughs. New York City could hopef… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You can squint and see the makings of cases leveling off in Manhattan (left-hand chart) but not really the rest of NYC (right-hand chart). Hard to know too much because of testing delays, though. https://t.co/NhlUAF6xeY https://t.co/dNOUZ5yxBf — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin We need more "actually, my mild breakthrough *truly was* mild" essays because one thing I learned from my truly mild breakthrough is that it was hard to distinguish from colds I might get several times a year. So I was really happy to have rapid tests at home to catch it quickly. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@bendreyfuss Yeah, I didn't see my family, travel outside the NYC metro, eat inside at a bar or restaurant (OK, I cheated once or twice) or go to a live sporting event, concert, movie, or poker tournament for the last 9 ½ months of 2020. Got to do all that in 2021 after getting vaccinated. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I also think Omicron, because of the very rapid rise and fall in cases that it's likely to produce, could provide a clearer off-ramp for COVID-related restrictions than if we'd muddled through under Delta. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Worth thinking about this scenario if you're making an economic or for that matter political forecast for next year. Next several weeks could be very difficult, but the US might be in a better position thereafter than it might have been otherwise. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Chris_arnade Yeah, some college campuses are a plausible exception. Even there I wonder what the true preferences of faculty and students are. But it's presumably close enough to a majority that extremely strict policies don't seem to be triggering a rebellion. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Various data points suggest perhaps 15% of Americans are super COVID-cautious, which I would describe as seeking to significantly limit face-to-face contact. Even though the 15% are more concentrated in some places, they're the majority almost nowhere, including in blue cities. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen 48-72 hours may be optimistic. The CityMD near me is advertising a 6 day turnaround on PCR tests. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Also sort of amusing that on the desktop version of the NYT homepage, the headline immediately below the one about how case counts are kind of useless is a headline about case counts. https://t.co/ZY6Cc7lJqR — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

https://t.co/VK7rCgToDK — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Not only was this question never "unthinkable"...but some of us have been saying for almost 2 years that case counts are pretty useless unless you know how much testing is happening. https://t.co/FkE17xTzBE — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@SopanDeb A very very very very small number of people make a living based on selling their thoughts and ideas. You and I are both among them. It's not an abstraction at all. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@SopanDeb The median American is an abstraction, the point is that elites should have a better understanding about the broad range of public opinion, which is pretty diverse in the United States but also pretty far removed from what blue-checkmarks think. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@SopanDeb Of course! The whole point is that elites like you and I ought to have better strategies for understanding public opinion than calibrating off of Twitter or our peer groups. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Bzzzzzt. The median American lives somewhere where Trump got 47% of the vote, as he did nationally. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It means that it's worth studying public opinion in a systematic way, e.g. by developing expertise in polling and behavioral data, rather than just guessing or making inferences based on what people in your social circle think. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Elites can have whatever tastes they want and there's no reason they ought to conform to mainstream culture. But I do think a lot of elites would fail a pop quiz on how the median American thinks and behaves, and that probably makes them a less effective advocate for their views. — PolitiTweet.org