Thread by @NateSilver538

Assuming nearly all are vaccinated by this point—which I assume is a fairly safe assumption (the survey is limited to the US)—my takeaway is that epidemiologists are extremely risk-averse, much more so than public health guidelines say they need to be.

nytimes.com/2021/05/12/ups…

They're also stricter than they themselves think they need to be. 94% say it's safe for vaccinated people to gather indoors with other vaccinated people in some capacity. But a majority of them aren't doing so, personally. A quarter aren't even meeting friends *outdoors* yet.

Yeah, there isn't a perfect baseline here. In theory, the survey tries to get around it by asking not only what they've done but also what they "would have done if necessary". Might have better if they had 3 categories (have done / would do / wouldn't do).

https://twitter.com/conorsen/status/1392446984934633477?s=20

At the same time, the median American is living in a way that increasingly resembles the pre-pandemic "normal" by this point, for better and worse. And this is obviously pretty far removed from that.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1392061718407356417?s=20

Not every epidemiologist is engaged in crafting public health guidance.

But I sort of wonder if the guidance would be better if it was written by people who were getting out and about into their communities to some reasonable degree, and maybe there isn't enough of that here.

Ahh, didn't see that the NYT also directly asked the epis about their risk aversion. (And indeed most described themselves as risk averse.)

https://twitter.com/clairecm/status/1392514594040532997?s=20

Data on vaccination rates among the panel. About 80% fully vaccinated, many others partly vaccinated, although half had unvaccinated members in their household.

https://twitter.com/sangerkatz/status/1392517224217382915?s=20