This article is confusing. Experts make a great case that J&J recipients should get a booster.
But then it's said a new study—so far described only in a J&J press release!—addressed "some of those concerns". Weak basis for concluding no booster needed.
Sure, one-shot J&J may provide decent protection against Delta and better-than-decent against severe illness from Delta. But why wouldn't you want the VERY good protection you might get from an mRNA booster?
One consistent lesson from COVID is you should trust the experts' evidence (e.g. studies that show mRNA boosters really boost protection in people who got the AZ vaccine) more than their proscriptive advice (e.g. "I wouldn't get a booster) when the two are in conflict.
In this case, I'd guess that experts are reluctant to get out ahead of the CDC (which I'd bet large $ will *eventually* endorse boosters but hasn't yet) and/or to encourage the mildly shady behavior you'd have to go through get a booster now. But that's not really science per se.
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Another question: Given that Garcia barely edged out Wiley in the penultimate round before nearly catching Adams, does that mean Wiley has a path *too* once absentees are added?
My guess is Wiley has a path, but it's pretty unlikely one (see next tweet).
I guess you can steel-man this by saying "behavioral science is science too!". I strongly agree.
But i) the public health community's instincts for behavioral science have been poor;
ii) Behavioral science would suggest an agency being less honest with people has consequences.
If you want to say "follow the *behavioral* science, *too*!", that's great!
But some of the people cited in this article have been quite hostile to behavioral scientists (sociologists, economists, political scientists, etc.) when they've tried to contribute their own expertise.
1) Parties usually course-correct after defeats and the GOP is doing the very opposite. It's not clear how well empirical precedents about mean-reversion during the midterms holds up under these conditions.
2) Swing voters tend to elect the out-party in midterms to create a balance of power. If they're convinced that the GOP will not wield its power responsibly or will even use control of Congress to permanently seize power, that calculation changes.
3) Even if swing voters don't care, Democratic base voters are likely to be very motivated by the claim that Democrats must keep control of Congress to prevent the presidency from being stolen in 2024. This may reduce the typical "enthusiasm gap" in midterm voting.
Yeah, the claim that ranked choice voting is the reason that (some) pollsters are sitting out the NYC race strikes me as total bullshit, more or less. Rather, it's likely a fairly hard race to poll and they're afraid of being wrong. But that has very little to do with RCV.
There's also been quite a bit of polling in the NYC mayor's race, just not much of it from the traditional "gold standard" firms. The same was true in the Georgia Senate runoffs and guess what happened? The polling did very, very well there.
If pollsters want to sit out high-profile races that's their prerogative. It may align with their incentives. Pollsters get a ton of crap when they're "wrong" but little credit when they're "right" and that's a deterrent to doing more polling.
Basically what I want to know is: what would experts say if you gave them truth serum? Given that many experts are now publicly entertaining the possibility of a lab leak when that would be a somewhat inconvenient conclusion, I assume their private belief might be higher.
But IDK ^^^ that's liable to be a pretty unreliable heuristic (trying to triangulate private beliefs from carefully-worded public statements).
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.
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).