Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheZvi The confoudner is that this is one of the slower times of the year in Vegas (it's weird to go there the week *before* Christmas). But among the people who were there, not many self-evident behavioral changes. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheZvi Like, here is attitude toward Omicron in Las Vegas, as summed up by the chyron on the local news. https://t.co/uOF1AiQA2w — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheZvi There are lots of cases where people are looking for them, like NY and DC. I was just in Vegas, though, there were plenty of test kits sitting on CVS shelves, and nobody seemed particularly concerned about Omicron. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheZvi One thing I've been thinking about is that Omicron is clearly so weird that we should be less anchored to the prior that it has similar severity to other variants. Or other properties for that matter (e.g. *how* it transmits). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie I think the thing that makes this tricky is that we might have been seeing a lot of problems anyway because of Delta. So you can be somewhat bullish on Omicron, but still worried about the next several weeks because the situation was already tenuous before it arrived. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Does anyone else read this as kind of...OK news? Cases have increased a lot in places like NYC and DC where people are diligent about getting tested. But they haven't increased a lot elsewhere. Undoubtedly a *ton* of underdetection. But that may imply most Omicron cases are mild. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If you believe statements such as "polls show BBB is super popular in West Virigina!" then I have a bridge over the Monongahela River to sell you. BBB polls just barely better than breakeven nationally. It is not going to be popular in a state Biden lost by 39 points. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Maybe a NYC thing but I know a lot of folks who got COVID in spring 2020... That aside, part of the adjustment IMO is that the vaccines were *so* effective at first that people were able to delay confronting the fact that COVID was a risk they had to manage like any other. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's almost as though we might have learned something from what all the South African epidemiologists and doctors were telling us three weeks ago! — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@bendreyfuss Yeah the answers to this are mostly 1) getting vaxxed 2) luck 3) privilege and 4) at the margin, difficult personal choices that presumably made sense in the context of one person's life but may not have made sense for someone else. And only 1) is anything worth bragging about. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheStalwart New York has smaller week vs weekend effects than most jurisdictions but still probably worth waiting until Tuesday's report. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

My semi-galaxy-brain take is that Democrats should repeal the SALT cap and then blue states should raise state taxes on the wealthy to fund climate and green energy spending. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@lxeagle17 Yeah. I'm going further back in time, I guess, to where the infrastructure bill was originally conceived, since a lot of the climate provisions in BBB could very credibly be described as infrastructure. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Anyway, leverage doesn't come from using some clever negotiating tactic. It comes almost entirely from being able to credibly walk away from a deal (credibly = without having to cut off one's nose to spite one's face). Manchin had leverage and the progressives did not. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Another interesting hypothetical is whether Democrats could have passed a somewhat more climate-friendly version of BIF, since it actually didn't need Manchin's vote having passed the Senate 69-30. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

That's NOT the situation Dems faced, however. They have exactly 50 votes. And policy preferences in today's Congress are largely unidimensional across a left-right scale. So pretty much, the most conservative D senator is the veto point, whatever cute tactics you might use. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Lumping bills together tends to work better when you *have votes to spare* and can do some logrolling, i.e. Senator A doesn’t love Bill Z and Senator B doesn’t love Bill Y, but they’ll agree to vote for them in exchange for the other senator’s vote on the other bill. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Certainly, progressives were right that decoupling BBB and the infrastructure bill made it more likely that infrastructure would pass without BBB. However, the alternative wasn't necessarily both passing. Perhaps more likely, neither would have passed. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ABCPolitics: Democrats are underdogs to keep the House in the 2022 midterms, @NateSilver538 says. “They have fallen behind Republica… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin @RidleyDM Yeah. I think the irony is that the messaging coming from the Twitter doc army tends tends to contain a lot more "spin" (not necessarily partisan spin, but appeals to liberal moral sentiments) than that coming out of the White House. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@MattZeitlin This from @RidleyDM is maybe a better articulation of my critique. "They" is sort of a subtweet of certain individuals. NYC public health officials generally do a very good and honest job at communication IMO. https://t.co/tqJ79K7VR8 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@notdred I think the US messaging has been pretty well-balanced from official channels. In the UK and Europe, perhaps less so. And from the US media, also perhaps less so. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Put it like this: if Omicron *does* prove to be milder after health officials insist there's "no evidence" it's milder—when there is evidence, just not proof—they're going to have a hell of a time getting people to take precautions for the not-so-mild Omega variant or whatever. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I don't know how well it will extrapolate to the rest of the world but the South Africa data is certainly encouraging. I think it's important for public health officials and journalists to share good news as well as bad news; otherwise, they risk squandering credibility. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Or figure out how to get Susan Collins to vote for your legislation (or how to beat her). — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In making claims about the popularity or lack thereof of "Build Back Better", keep in mind that most Americans have no idea what it is. Google search traffic on BBB (or the more amorphous "spending bill") is MUCH lower than for ACA/Obamacare when that was being debated. https://t.co/3sK8gUT0GR — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And of course, because governments tend to enact the recommendations of their advisory groups, the assumptions behind the worst-case "scenarios" (which assume *inaction*) never come to pass and can never be verified. In the Popperian sense, it's not really science at all. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If you ask the report authors, they say they're not making predictions: rather, they're modeling "scenarios" conditional on certain assumptions. But, of course, the media treats them as predictions and governments use them to rally support for their preferred policies. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Granted this is a hard problem, since epidemic outcomes are determined in part by governmental choices. But as someone who makes models for a living, I find worrying when there's such a murky overlap between modeling outcomes and enacting policy recommendations. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ReubenR80027912 @TheStalwart Yeah, DC is a lot more conformist than e.g. NYC so I don't know how easy it is to extrapolate. — PolitiTweet.org