Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This also explains why the White House got so mad at e.g. the New York Times for its overwrought and sometimes misleading coverage of breakthrough infections. https://t.co/njkW6dueHe — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Democrats still don't have any real leverage with Joe Manchin and I kind of don't understand why people are pretending otherwise. Sinema, different story. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Personally, I still think this is mostly the Delta variant + some reversion to the mean in a 50/50 country. In August, 26% of people said COVID was the most important problem, up from 8% in June. https://t.co/UdQsAjCjtT — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Biden approval now almost 3 points underwater. https://t.co/n2XzvOgs0J https://t.co/RAZ4eKC7QL — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@mattyglesias But you have to concede that their predictions were correct in all cases where their predictions were correct. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @DataDhrumil: If you care about #OpenData and rigorous quantitative analysis in journalism, the Data Editor role at @FiveThirtyEight is… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'd set the over under at maybe 7,000 with high uncertainty, down from 8,600 in 2019. Pre-Delta I think it might have been on track for a record number like 10K. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As more robust evidence comes out on how breakthrough infections very likely do *not* transmit as easily nor for as long, it becomes clearer and clearer how misleading news coverage like this was. cc: @nytimes https://t.co/mAvvDb9VLA — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In contast to the less certain national impact, I do think it's worth considering the local impact if purple-red states like TX and FL pass laws as though they're Alabama. FL in particular has polled as having fairly strong support for abortion rights. https://t.co/kq1dx0KzbP — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidshor Yeah, for sure. There are a lot of better things to worry about right now than looking at the polls. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Israel's population is young. 28% are under age 15; the comparable figure is 18% in the US/UK. Only about one-third of Israelis age 12-15 are fully vaccinated (and almost nobody <12). So, a high *adult* vaccination rate doesn't = an especially high vaccination rate overall. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yeah, this question (about "obligations to other countries") would seem to be pretty explicitly *outside* of the FDA's mission. https://t.co/p7o9VPLEbG — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidshor You and I probably differ to some degree about the robustness of long-term predictions. But my point is more that it's generally too soon for stories along the lines of "X news event just happened: How does that affect the midterms?" — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

But there are also so many other issues—abortion and the Supreme Court more generally, immigration, inflation, race, voting rights and attacks on democracy, China, Afghanistan, climate change and severe weather—that could have unpredictable effects on the midterms. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The chief reason for that is COVID. The situation will *probably* be better in Nov. 2022 than it is now, and perhaps it will much better. But, I don't think anyone would want to be super confident about any of that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Election predictions are generally fairly useless more than say 3-6 months in advance, but that's probably especially true for next year's midterms. I just don't think we a great idea what the news cycle and broader political environment will look like a year from now. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

TBH, I think there's a pretty good argument for *not looking at raw case numbers at all*. For a sense of "how COVID is going", look at the positive test rate as your leading indicator, and hospitalizations/deaths as your somewhat lagging (but ultimately what matters) indicator. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Moreover, Israel has massively ramped its testing during the Delta surge, whereas in the US it has only increased modestly. So that's going to make the surge look superficially a lot worse than if it were doing US levels of testing. https://t.co/9QLyrtoaHO https://t.co/z1GSDixLT4 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yeah, I've been yelling at people for a year and a half that case numbers are only so useful unless you're also looking test numbers, and unfortunately it hasn't really sunk in. Israel is doing massive amounts of testing, about 5x more per capita than we're doing in the US. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @perrybaconjr: Really good, important project by @laurabronner and the @FiveThirtyEight team to try to measure and quantify support for… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

That's not to say the Delta wave has peaked, although the CDC forecast ensemble thinks we're near the peak on cases and not too far away on deaths. But the vaccines are making this considerably less bad than the situation last winter. https://t.co/zUw2G37UAZ — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I think @jbarro pointed this out the other week but one could make a bullish case for Biden based given that people are probably wrong about the "worst being yet to come" on COVID. (Last winter was much worse, with 2-3x the death rate we have now and society far more shut down.) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Case in point: a Dutch music festival that let you get in the *moment after you were vaccinated* produced a fairly big outbreak. By contrast, Lollapalooza, which required full vaccination, resulted in rather few cases. https://t.co/X3LxfgPgfA https://t.co/Sv5hKWPtut — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This kind of defeats the purpose of a vaccine pass. De Blasio seems to think it's just a cute incentive for vaccination. But it's *mainly* a strategy to let vaccinated people socialize more safely and for businesses and their staffs to remain open safely. https://t.co/VeFZa1UWEi https://t.co/Lw6qij03Jp — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Very cool to see an actual randomized control trial on mask- wearing, which finds positive effects. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

When there *is* a scientific consensus, like say on anthropogenic global warming or on the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, it's a rare and valuable thing. You undercut the importance of cases like those when you use "follow the science" to score a cheap rhetorical point. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Maybe we need to be more careful with terms like "follow the science"? Experts disagree with one another on all these decisions, there is "science" on both sides, and this sort of rhetoric is often used as a cudgel to create a false sense of consensus. https://t.co/ZQLGzKSOXn https://t.co/qBR9wLlchx — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

FWIW people have this incorrect stereotype of NYC as being extremely shut down, which isn't really true. The city has been fairly lively until recently (August is often pretty dead). But we do have a vaccine requirement for indoor venues, which is increasingly being enforced. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Not much of a Delta wave in NYC, especially not in terms of hospitalizations and deaths, which is what you get when you have a city that both has a fairly high vax rate and frankly also meaningful immunity from previous waves. https://t.co/ctDbJm9h2o https://t.co/b4vPyynDlM — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@phl43 @lymanstoneky @ritwik_priya And I don't find 0.3% hard to believe given how fast Delta hit and likely substandard conditions of medical care at the peak of the wave. — PolitiTweet.org