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31 Mar, 4 tweets, 1 min read
At some point if there's excess demand for vaccine in urban areas and excess supply in rural areas, that starts to reflect a policy failure of federal and state allocation formulas.
Most of this is presumably vaccine hesitancy being greater in rural (i.e. generally redder) areas. But I suspect also there are asymmetries caused by more people coming from the country to the city for vaccines than the other way around.
Example of that in New York, for instance:

amny.com/news/several-s…
One potential issue is that even where cities limit access to vaccine sites based on residency, they generally do it based on either living *or working* in the jurisdiction. Thus, if allocation formulas are based solely on the residential population, they may undersupply cities.

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More from @NateSilver538

Nate Silver Profile picture
31 Mar
So here's how this came out. I have no idea about the "right" answer—I'd probably have chosen the popular 41K-65K bucket if forced to pick—but I'm glad there are sizable numbers in all 4 buckets because I don't trust highly confident predictions about COVID trajectories.
On the one hand, the case for optimism is sort of obvious. At some point, barring immune-escape variants, it seems likely we'll hit a threshold where rising levels of vaccination/immunity simply wins out over other factors, as in Israel right now.
But I wonder if people are underestimating the lags. It takes ~2 weeks from your 1st shot to have much protection at all & 5-6 wks to count as "fully vaccinated" with a 2-dose vaccine. Plus there are reporting lags. A "new" case today may actually have been acquired 1-2 wks ago.
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
25 Mar
Our new pollster ratings are up!

They've been updated to reflect the results of the 2020 general election + the GA runoffs.

Also a shiny new interactive. Fivey Fox makes a cameo appearance.

Here's the link. I'll discuss some key findings in this 🧵.

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratin…
Note that we now have pages for individual pollsters. So you can see exactly which polls made it into the rating for each polling firm. Basically this means every poll within 3 weeks of an election since 1998!

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratin…
Or if you want to go even deeper, you can find the entire database on GitHub. We strongly encourage people to use this database for academic research, etc. A LOT of hours of gone into building and maintaining it.

github.com/fivethirtyeigh…
Read 17 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
24 Mar
NYC's COVID data has been screwed up lately so here's what the state's data shows for NYC:

Cases (7-day average)
Current: 3921
1 week ago: 3854
2 weeks ago: 3797
3 weeks ago: 3999

Positive test rate (7-day avg)
Current: 4.3%
1 week ago: 4.3%
2 weeks ago: 3.9%
3 weeks ago: 4.2%
On the one hand, I'm pretty sure that sites showing a decline in NYC (the NYT shows this, for example) are wrong. They're filling in missing city data with state data for the city. But that state data isn't apples-to-apples; it doesn't include probably cases, for instance.
On the other hand, I'm seeing a lot of loose talk about a "spike" in NYC when, no, that isn't really justified either. For better or worse, the numbers have settled into a plateau, which is also the case throughout the Northeast. beta.healthdata.gov/Health/COVID-1…
Read 8 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
1 Mar
I, too, wish states kept restrictions in place for another few weeks until we're more caught up on vaccinations etc. But I think it's worth thinking about why states (recently including lots of blue states/cities) are opening up despite the CDC and others encouraging them not to.
Two obvious points. First, governors don't think of public health officials as having balanced all equities and considered all costs/benefits. They think of them as one side of "the argument", advocating for a position, with business owners, "citizens", etc. on the other side.
Second, they probably think of public health officials as *always* wanting to keep *everything* closed without clear timelines. Now, the rationale is about new variants. I (Nate) think that + timing of vaccines is a good rationale! But governors may see this as moving goalposts.
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
8 Feb
Don't think there's been any point in the pandemic at which there's been such a confusing mix of good *and* bad COVID news. I actually think the good > bad, but there's plenty of both, and it's worth thinking about how people react to the uncertainty and confusion that creates.
I guess what I'm getting at is that uncertainty demands nuance, but ironically, people aren't looking for nuance at times of greater uncertainty! They're tired of the uncertainty and want simplicity and even dogmatism.
One obvious example is you've seen an uptick in people scolding images depicting both behaviors that are quite dangerous (that supermarket in Florida where no one's wearing a mask!😬) and others showing e.g. relatively safe outdoor activities. We've lost some of the nuance there.
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
5 Jan
There's this lazy critique that "the mainstream media isn't taking the 'coup' seriously". Really? Have you actually read the articles that e.g. the NYT and WaPo are writing? This is the first article I found on NYT.com today. nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/…
I criticized the NYT and other outlets a ton from mid-2015 through mid-2017 for how they covered Trump, including this sort of "news analysis" piece that was prone toward tired tropes and false equivalencies. These stories have changed a LOT since then, in my view for the better.
And, yes, sometimes you have to analyze the political incentives of the relevant actors, which may seem banal. And sometimes you have to assess the likelihood of success (exceedingly low). That is part of the story, and moreover, part of taking the story *seriously*.
Read 4 tweets

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