Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Spoiler alert: if you think the mainstream media has some sort of anti-Biden or anti-liberal bias, you're not going to love this podcast. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Always enjoy doing poker-related podcasts — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@NickRiccardi Yeah, I'm deliberately excluding LA from the SF/DC/Boston group for various reasons. Also maybe a little biased since my dad grew up there. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

IMO Chicago has a much better vibe than DC, Boston or SF precisely because it isn't a one-industry town. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm The White House was good on this and the bureaucrats screwed it up. https://t.co/g1obGHiCFN — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yeah. Democrats face huge structural challenges and anti-democratic (lower case 'd') threats but 2022 likely to be a reminder that they aren't all that popular, either. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Neoavatara 90% of people understand this but the 10% are extremely over-represented on Twitter. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The problem is records on 1st, 2nd and 3rd doses may not be correctly linked, especially if you get them at different facilities. So CDC may overestimate the % who has gotten at least one dose, because some people are counted twice. But, they may underestimate % fully vaccinated. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

...Or you can look at something like the Virginia gubernatorial election, where COVID-related school closures played out in a more negative way for Democrats than you might have expected from surveys. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So this is a case where hard, revealed-preference data, e.g. on travel or restaurant bookings, probably ought to take precedence over people's purported level of caution in surveys. Most people are back to their old routines. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Why? 1) People who are staying home b/c of COVID easier to reach 2) COVID concern tends to be higher among high-edu, high-news consuming, high-social-trust Americans, who are more likely to respond to polls 3) Maybe some social desirability bias (people exaggerate their caution) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Not great that surveys are overestimating vaccine uptake (though, I'd note that the CDC's data has some issues too). Both on vaccines and other COVID precautions, there are likely some fairly big biases in surveys toward people who are more conscientious/careful about COVID. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@thehowie I guess it seems increasingly likely that *either* the vaccines (and/or "natural" immunity?) are quite effective against severe disease (*maybe* more so than lab work implies?) *or* Omicron is intrinsically less virulent, to some degree. Either one would be pretty good news, no? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Question for the epis: At what point does this start to become meaningful? If all Omicron cases are mild/asymptomatic out of 337 detected in the EU so far, that's rather unlikely to occur by chance alone, no? What % of Delta cases are mild/asymptomatic? https://t.co/f9A4cxhlSF https://t.co/mP8CS3vak7 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @mugecevik: @NateSilver538 @sailorrooscout I think it's fairly difficult to compare different studies for various reasons. I tried to ex… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @paulmromer: @moskov @mattyglesias @NateSilver538 @saliva_direct The other wrinkle now is that antiviral treatment works better if it is… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @sailorrooscout: @NateSilver538 Absolutely! If anything, I want people to walk away from this thread realizing it is actually good news,… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sailorrooscout Cool, appreciate it. I guess we'll just throw 'em both into the polling average. ;-) And I appreciate that it seems like pretty decent news overall. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@sailorrooscout Do you have any thoughts on how to account for the difference between 7-fold and 40-fold? Plausibly due to small sample size or are there important methodological differences between these studies? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias @TheStalwart @felixsalmon @moskov @paulmromer I mean, I also think there could be better messaging around at-home tests. I'd guess that a significant portion of the US population don't know they're widely available, and another percentage thinks they're not reliable. And they're cost-prohibitive for some people. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@felixsalmon @mattyglesias @moskov @paulmromer Also, cheap/free testing may allow people to more confidently engage in social activity or go to school or work (when negative) which has a lot of tangible and intangible benefits. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias I think it becomes more important the milder that cases get on average, because people are less likely to be able to reliably self-diagnose mild cases. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Honestly not sure how the US would react to a COVID variant that is very contagious but less severe. But the base case is always: We’ll muddle through with a largely incoherent patchwork of policies and personal behaviors. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ScottGottliebMD Have we reached the territory where these numbers are unexpectedly good relative to expectations? Or too soon to make very much of it? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

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

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Am I having a stroke or did reporters like this dude treat the security of one's personal devices as the biggest deal on the planet in 2016? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen Yeah, the phrase "no evidence" in WHO-speak almost invariably means "pretty good evidence but no proof yet". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen Like I still don't know entirely what to think about the "omicron more mild" claims, but by following the right experts and doing a little debiasing (i.e. which ones tend to be more optimistic/pessimistic/etc.) I'd learned a lot about it before it became a NYT-approved narrative. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@conorsen I think part of it is that what the experts *know* and that what the experts *say* are two different things because experts in any field under a lot of public scrutiny have somewhat skewed incentives. So there's a certain amount of decoding that the market can do. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@notdred Appreciate it. I booked my booster dose the other week the moment you were like "uh oh, Omicron looks pretty bad". — PolitiTweet.org