Nate Silver HAS been riding this story for a while…
He has been questioning the hair on fire media reports , especially those done by the New York Times and some in the White House…
We REALLY won’t know what is actually going on for a long while…
Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
Why are *reported* deaths in this slide so different than projected deaths? Was this a model originally developed in March or something? It is very strange. nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/
Replying to
Projecting ~200K new detected cases each day **by the end of the month** from a current baseline of ~30K is also a LOT, even with quite pessimistic assumptions. I would encourage some caution with taking these at face value.
Indeed, this also doesn’t make much sense.
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Nick Riccardi
@NickRiccardi
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How do you multiply the number of projected cases by 8 and only double the number of deaths? Is that because deaths lag behind new cases (implying a similarly grim increase in deaths longterm) or because many of these cases will be due to new testing?
Yeah, could also be: someone wants to scare Trump out of touting re-opening, so they’re releasing some sort of worst-case scenario or conjectural scenario and it’s being portrayed as the base case.
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Jonathan Bernstein
@jbview
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Worth considering, as is the possibility that the White House has absolutely no idea what it’s doing at all. I suppose it’s also possible the leaked slapped-together numbers are aimed at Trump in an attempt to move him back to the mitigation side. twitter.com/NateSilver538/…
So the Washington Post adds a lot more context, though I think their headline is misleading. The 200k cases/day number was from an incomplete draft version of model and apparently one of many scenarios, not some sort of official White House estimate. washingtonpost.com/health/governm
The NYT is doing great work on COVID-19. But especially given how much confusion already exists about projections and models, it was irresponsible of them to release the slide deck and put such bold, somewhat misleading headlines on it without providing any of that context.
Can’t believe the NYT made this their print headline. There is no evidence this is some sort of official White House projection; instead, reporting from other news organizations contracts that. And parts of it literally don’t make any sense (see above).
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Brian Stelter
@brianstelter
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NYT’s scoop: “U.S. QUIETLY FEARS VIRUS’S DAILY TOLL WILL SOON DOUBLE.” Trump’s response: “I know nothing about it. I don’t know anything about it. Nobody told me that. I think it’s — I think it’s false, I think it’s fake news.”