Is there any journalist who came in with more promise and ultimately delivered less than Nate Silver? Perhaps his best work is inspiring righteous dunks from others:
Silver came on the scene as a “data journalist,” promising to deliver a fact-based view of politics based on statistical analysis. But it turns out that there just isn’t a lot of clean data that can be used for data-driven political journalism, so he generally reverts to punditry of the worst sort.
By the way, if you want to know why it takes so long for the J&J vaccine to be approved, read up at Nate’s competition, The Verge, which is part of the Vox media network.
Three weeks may seem like a long time to wait before the committee meets and the FDA makes its decision. And in the context of the pandemic, three weeks is a long time — thousands of people could die in that gap — but it’s actually remarkably fast given the enormity of the task at hand. The agency will use every second of that time to make sure there aren’t any safety concerns with the vaccine and that it can actually do what it claims to do. Skipping steps could erode already fragile trust in vaccination.
That’s a piece by Nicole Westman, who is their health and technology reporter. She’s written quite a few good stories that come from old fashioned reporting, based on quaint “facts” and “research”. I’m sure her total compensation is a fraction of Nate’s, and I’ll also go out on a limb and say that she almost certainly works harder than he does.
Nate joins Ezra Klein on a long list of supposedly careful pundits who have said very stupid things about COVID vaccines.
df
“How hard could it possibly be?” – Every non-expert who doesn’t understand how hard it is. “Why should this take 3 weeks though?” There are two possibilities. One, every career scientist at the FDA is a bumbling idiot, or two, it’s actually complicated. I’m guessing it’s the latter. I think Nate Silver also doesn’t understand that three weeks is lightspeed compared to how long it normally takes to approve vaccines. We’re lucky it’s not longer. That the FDA thinks they can reasonably do this in three weeks is the real miracle.
Another Scott
If Nate has sincere questions about whether the J&J vaccine will be approved, he should consider what happened with the Merck and AstraZeneca/Oxford attempts.
tl;dr – Independent people must carefully look at all the evidence. That takes time.
Cheers,
Scott.
Catherine D.
@df: The variant I’ve encountered most often is “all you have to do is”
The Thin Black Duke
Stay in your lane, Nate.
Omnes Omnibus
It the same thing with all the people who wonder why Congress hasn’t enacted X law within one day of a triggering event or why courts haven’t acted sooner on something. Having people who know what they are doing do their jobs sometimes takes time. I would rather have the experts do their jobs well. It takes more tome to do it over than to do it right. And there isn’t always a chance to do it over.
Brachiator
Silver is out of his depth and way beyond his area of competence. There is fundamentally no reason to pay any attention to him when he tries to write about the pandemic. He ain’t much of a pundit, and clearly is no journalist.
Nicole Westman knows her stuff and knows what she is doing.
Does Silver have a take on the Super Bowl?
df
@Catherine D.: Ooh that’s a good one. The ones I see frequently are “why don’t you just…” and “I’m not an expert, but…”
Eunicecycle
Nate has been insufferable during this pandemic. He needs to shut up and let the experts speak.
SiubhanDuinne
He shoulda stuck with SABRmetrics.
WaterGirl
Nate Silver was never a journalist.
rikyrah
?????
Animals pay us no mind.
The replies???
p.a.
… but Nate stays at Holiday Inn…
trollhattan
I suppose Nate could line up for the Chinese or
SovRussian vaccines, given how rigorously and quickly they were approved.Having your retail customers beta-test software has worked well for Adobe and Microsoft, so why not vaccines? “I just got the Ver. 2.1.12 update to my Sputnik V.”
MomSense
I’m biased because Nate is a friend of several of my friends. Yes, he shoulld probably “stay in his lane” where he has expertise, but Nate Silver and Ezra Klein are hardly democracy destroying journalists. Right now our energies would be better spent going after the fascists and propagandists.
Mousebumples
As a pharmacist, he reminds me of the patients who would complain that it takes more than a minute to fill their script.
It doesn’t take more than a minute to hand you something… Making sure it’s the right something and won’t accidentally kill or injure you takes a little longer… *facepalm
Suzanne
@df:
Honestly, I think it’s a reasonable question. I deal with local government processes a lot (in my case, site plan amendment, building permitting, entitlements, and others) and the processes can take a long time. And when you dig into why something takes, say, 120 days, it’s really because there’s a long line of projects and yours sits in the queue for 118 days. (For the record, I don’t think this is unreasonable, but when no one actually articulates what is actually happening, any timeframe can feel like bullshit.)
What is actually helpful is when the agency says that review will take three weeks and then they explain exactly what the agenda is for each day of those three weeks.
West of the Rockies
@df:
I’ve see enough Fringe and Star Trek to know that a competent doctor should be able to create a vaccine (in sufficient quantity) to knock C19 on its ass in 24 hours, tops.
Immanentize
My Mom, 90, got her first jab in upstate NY last week. I am really beginning to sigh a sigh of relief.
But only beginning to.
Suzanne
@Catherine D.: The variant I hear is, “Why don’t they just build XXXXX?!”. And XXXXX is very expensive, complicated, probably with no business case, and “they” is never defined.
Immanentize
@Suzanne:
Flying car!
Jet pack!
Build it for me!
The Dark Avenger
Nate and Ezra shows what happens when you go to college and don’t smoke too much weed.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Did Silver interview anyone in asking the question? It looked as though it was just a prelude to empty pontification.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Given that, in this instance, we know that a Covid vaccine is going directly to the front of the line and that anyone who shows any curiosity about the matter know that the process usually takes much longer, I don’t think it is a reasonable question.
df
@Suzanne: Oh yeah, I don’t disagree there. I guess Nate rubbed me the wrong way because it seemed dismissive, like “psh, three weeks?”, instead of a more earnest curiosity about the process.
@West of the Rockies: Of course the testing phase will include massive doses of LSD whilst submerged in a sensory deprivation tank. You know, for science. rich cello music and lens flares
David Anderson
The people who are adjacent to these processes and who likely have reasonable well informed opinions through osmosis are staying in their fucking lanes.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
This is frealz one of the best band names in band name history.
Wag
@The Dark Avenger: Nate and Ezra shows what happens when you go to college and don’t smoke
too muchenough weed.fixed
Immanentize
@trollhattan: It is a very good band name….
Suzanne
@Immanentize: I heard a lot of it during the great trans-people-in-the-bathroom debates of 2017. “Why don’t they just build lots of individual bathrooms?” or somesuch. Any of us who work in buildings could tell you that bathrooms are really expensive, they don’t generate any revenue, and we are still catching up on making public bathrooms accessible (and the ADA was passed in the first Bush Administration!) and getting parity in quantity for women. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t make bathrooms better for trans people, but, like, do you think property developers are suddenly gonna be like, YEAH I’m gonna put in all these non-revenue-generating expensive bathrooms! Of course not. We’ll need to change building codes, which takes a minimum of three years in most places, and it will take decades for that to actually get built at scale.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mousebumples:
Reminds me of the customers who would get pissy with me because something rang up wrong. Even better when it was because they didn’t read the price tag properly and thought the price was just that instead of per pound. Understandable mistake, but some people shoot the messenger when they’re angry
The Dark Avenger
@Wag: Ezra did two years at UCSC, home of the banana slug mascot and a student body well known for its’ herbaceous habits.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
“Fast, cheap, or good? Pick two.”
RSA
I don’t know how relevant this is, but I just finished writing and submitting a review of a journal article (non-medical, but in an experimental field) and there are quite a lot of issues to consider to understand what’s going on. Such as the experiment design, the measures used, the relationship between the samples and the population, the analysis techniques, how deviations from expectations should be handled, what conclusions can be drawn, what implications those conclusions should have for practice… Some of this is cut-and-dried, depending on the domain, but not all of it is. And all that goes toward one person’s opinion. I might have missed something, which is why a few people go through the same process, and our judgments are reviewed in turn.
Silver sometimes writes as if he thinks that data analysis is all that counts, and that it can be done independent of what the data actually mean, but in general that’s not true at all.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Similar to the question, “Why don’t they just make every row an exit by adding a door?” with airliners.
“We could, but it would be too heavy to fly.”
Delk
I’ve been waiting 36 years for an HIV vaccine. I took a lot of experimental and fast-tracked drugs during that time. Three of them put me in the hospital. One of those actually put me in the hospital twice.
df
@Suzanne: I’ve gotten too involved in local politics the last three-ish years, and it definitely opened my eyes to stuff like that. I wasn’t used to those timescales. A friend worked for a while on a lot of really good advisory material for ADUs, only to have City Council reject the much-needed update to our ADU ordinance. We have a friendly Council again, but the whole ordeal has taken years, and is still ongoing.
I tip my hat to the folks who are good at the long game.
Kent
On the vaccine front, my wife (who is Chilean) reports that vaccine efforts are finally taking full effect in Chile. All of our elderly relatives have been vaccinated and a majority of our younger friends and acquaintances. My wife comes from a rather affluent social set so that may influence anecdotal data. But apparently they are going like gangbusters in the vaccination effort.
They are using the Russian vaccine which is apparently what they can get now compared to Pfizer or Moderna, and aren’t waiting. Chile has a very robust national health system, sort of a smaller version of what they have in the UK that is supplemented by private clinics and hospitals. It also has no states or counties. There are “regions” but things like public health are very much top down from the national level. Chile was well positioned for a national vaccination campaign because they administer all of their other childhood and adult vaccination campaigns through the same exact system with the same exact people. Basically from what I understand they are pushing out vaccine as soon as they get it, with far less of the phased approach that the US obsesses with.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not arguing that Nate’s tone isn’t bullshit. But, I would like the FDA’s communications department to publish that information. Pass it along to Jen Psaki. More people will be on board with good governance and regulation if they understand what’s happening.
dm
I think maybe one should separate the idle twit-twat on twitter from one’s assessment of people in their professional life. As far as I’ve seen, Nate’s writing on 538 is okay.
Nate asks a question: “Why does it take three weeks?”, and amidst all the bulltwit, gets some answers. Good!
Maybe I’m just not as smart as Mistermix, but I’ve long thought Klein does some very good work, particularly in his interviews. Last week when Mistermix dunked on Ezra Klein’s perfectly reasonable question about whether the US, Europe, Japan (and maybe a few other places, like the UK) could harmonize their approval of drugs in some way, expediting the process, I just rolled my eyes (there were good points made in the following discussion, which would need to be addressed — e.g., worry about forum-shopping, suggesting that the way to do it would be bilateral agreements, etc.)
But then, I don’t twit, save following links to some of the things Anne Laurie links to, plus the cute-animal things that show up here. Mostly because few points worth making are made in one or two gross of characters.
Life’s too short to fret about Nate Silver’s tweets.
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: For sure.
But in general, most people don’t know what goes into anyone’s job. Often, when you explain it, those people come away better for it.
dmsilev
@The Thin Black Duke:
The whole problem is that he believes “his lane” is vastly broad. And shallow. He’s very explicit about that:
What the Fox Knows
That model has its strengths. It also has its weaknesses. Like now. There are times when deep knowledge of a particular domain (the “hedgehog” that he implicitly derides) is far more important than a holistic view of everything.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“Hello, Police? I’d like to report a murder…”
ShadeTail
No, they are vaccine-destroying journalists. Which, at the moment, is arguably much worse. Five Americans died on January 6. Nearly half a million of them have died from this pandemic. This is something we need to get right, and Silver et.al aren’t helping.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
The Russian vaccine has some lingering questions about efficacy, though, from what I’ve seen. Hopefully, it’s effective enough to prevent widespread transmission, but this does remind me of a question I’ve been meaning to ask in relation to vaccines and the new variants. I’ve read that vaccines can be tweaked in response to the spike protein mutations, but what about the people who received the older, less protective vaccines? Would they need to be immunized again? Would receiving additional vaccines be a safety issue? Or would it be unnecessary?
My mother has told me she does not want the J&J vaccine because it’s only 66% effective. Telling her about the 100% efficacy against hospitalization/serious illness doesn’t do a thing; she wants the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine and will refuse the J&J vaccine if that’s available to her
laura
Nate’s twitter feed reeks of entitlement and derision of anyone not named Nate Silver. I didn’t get any sense that he was actually interested in process. What Suzanne said!
dr. bloor
@Suzanne:
I’m gonna guess that the intricacies of a vaccine review protocol are probably beyond the ken of 99.9999% of us, and not worth taking the time to map out for Nate.
And to add, that anyone who thinks three weeks is a long time in the present context would probably be education-proof in terms of learning anything from a detailed time line.
laura
@dmsilev: BTW, spouse started the dough yesterday so we’re having the King Arthur Baking cheesy deep dish pizza today.
laura
trollhattan
@dm:
IIUC under an emergency declaration the testing and approval processes are already considerably accelerated compared to the usual process under normal protocols. A year ago weren’t the “best guesses” for a vaccine in the two-to-three year range?
Am reminded of a ginormous CERCLA remedial investigation I was involved in where the report production was lagging behind schedule because of its size and complexity. The program and project managers were engineers and doing what engineers do when a project is lagging, ordered up a bunch of toxicologists from other company offices to fly in and speed up the human health risk assessment, the main choke point on the critical path.
One of my friends in the office was a toxicologist. She tried to point out to the head honchos that this wasn’t a construction project and one cannot dial up toxicologists in the fashion of adding backhoes and dumptrucks to a construction project, comparing it to have nine women deliver a baby in one month. That had no impact and the new staff arrived.
So they spent the extra money for the added staff but the HHRA took the amount of time it took, and was not meaningfully faster. The added chaos getting a bunch of guest risk assessors up to speed on the very complicated job was a sight to behold.
Omnes Omnibus
Being a good fox means knowing when to defer to the hedgehog.
dmsilev
@laura: Enjoy! It’s a good recipe.
Brian
@df: the guy looks at really simple data. Overcomplicates it for projections then thinks he is an expert in what I assume is very complicated data.
These aren’t variables of hit versus out. Strike versus ball.
Starboard Tack
@RSA:
Toughest class I had as an undergrad was Design of Experiments. Worse than Quantum Mechanics, which isn’t supposed to make sense.
The Thin Black Duke
My sister died of AIDS before there were viable medical therapies available. Bad timing, right? I’m amazed that several effective vaccines for Covid are available now and Nate is bitching about–about what exactly?
dmsilev
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, that’s the part he seems to have trouble with.
Baud
The one tweet is ok. The “Hey no rush” tweet is the type of naked cynicism that hurts our efforts.
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
Yesss ??????
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Yeah. The one could be seen as an earnest question. The “It’s not like we’re in a pandemic or anything” one is assholish and like you said, cynical
People like Silver need to be more careful with the things they type under their names because some people trust what they say
Catherine D.
@The Dark Avenger: Banana Slug Fight Song
Kent
Yeah, I don’t know. Chile is definitely taking the “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good” approach to public health here and under the (correct) assumption that everything they do to bring down the pandemic is worth doing.
They have a MUCH better public vaccination program that we have here in the US. Their main and only obstacle is getting the vaccine to distribute. Apparently there is very little protest or objection to the Russian vaccine down there. People are just taking it. The politics of masks and vaccines and such are kind of a uniquely US/UK/Brazilian sort of obsession. Chile isn’t like that.
I’ve been trying to get signed up for a vaccine here in SW Washington for 2 weeks. I qualify for Phase 1b and haven’t been able to get an appointment yet. I’ll take whatever they offer without reservation.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Right. Everyone wants to pretend that they’re some lowly BJ commenter who can say what they want with no repercussions in an era of propaganda.
piratedan
my guess is while data is “data”, not all “data” is created equally.
I wonder how many years Nate went to school to get his chops in his chosen specialty…
Then apply how long it takes just to get to be an intern for any medical specialty….
and for these types of specific applications over the entire field of medicine and the understanding of virology, medical testing, chemistry, pharmaceuticals isn’t just off the shelf type knowledge
I guess it’s like walking into an auto parts store and asking the person behind the counter for a new carburetor without indicating the make and model of the car and not understanding why they’re all not interchangeable.
Omnes Omnibus
@piratedan: My car has fuel injection.
Suzanne
@dr. bloor:
But none of us would come out dumber for it.
If I understood the issue 10% better than I do now, I would consider it a win.
Tom Levenson
@Immanentize: I read that as “my mom, 90, got her first job…last week,” and I was torn between “damn, she’s impressive” and “what, 90, and needs to work?”
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Is it also stepping out over the line?
BruceFromOhio
If a journalist or reporter has been “on the medical beat” or is quoting sources in the medical industry, we should pay attention. Otherwise, don’t bother (looking at you, Klein, Silver, et al)
dmsilev
Analogy: “I know a little bit about everything” pundits are the management consultants of the journalism world.
Baud
Nate’s tweets remind me of that old saying, perhaps pre twitter.
If you want to know the answer to something, don’t ask a question. Post the wrong answer and wait for people to correct you.
BruceFromOhio
@MomSense:
Pretty sure we can do both.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud:
If you are lost in the forest, don’t bother shouting for help. Instead, prepare a martini – people will pop out of nowhere to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.
Beautifulplumage
@ShadeTail: yes! These uniformed opinions might seem harmless, there’s a big difference between “ask a question” and then answering your own question “there are two possibilities…” and then spouting uninformed opinions.
And I get the friends who are standing up for Nate by trivialising it. In starting 538 Nate chose to be a very public expert in political polling analysis. Unfortunately, he, like many experts, now thinks his processes for analysing polling data transfers to the scientific & healthcare realm. Living around a bunch of engineers, I have often experienced this same situation. Not every problem has an engineering solution; polling data is not scientific data.
tl:dr Nate should stay in his lane but has gotten used to being a “data expert” and now wants to very publicly use that tool on unrelated problems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: No, it is Swedish and therefore orderly.
piratedan
@Omnes Omnibus: TMI
Hob
@Suzanne: “What is actually helpful is when the agency says that review will take three weeks and then they explain exactly what the agenda is for each day of those three weeks”
There is virtually no job, certainly no important job involving more than a tiny number of people, where “explain exactly what the agenda is for each day” is a thing one can actually do in advance, at least not unless one is willing to just rattle off a bunch of bullshit in order to sound serious. I know that in this case it was meant in a good spirit, but in practice that kind of statement is good for nothing except stirring up faux outrage at the fancy experts and bureaucrats who can’t even tell us what they’re doing, etc. etc.
It’s basically the equivalent of someone insisting that you provide a minute-by-minute account in advance of how you’re going to spend your own work day, with the understanding that if you can’t make a convincing case (to an already suspicious person who has no prior knowledge of your job) for why that minute is crucial to the task, then that must mean you’re a slacker and you don’t take your work seriously.
Brachiator
OT. Former Secretary of State George Shultz passed away at the age of 100. Apparently, he was the oldest cabinet member of any administration.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I made the first bad recipe ever from King Arthur Flour. I made their no-knead Harvest bread, and it was downright awful. I tried to eat some of it and ended up throwing the whole thing into the garbage.
Disappointing. It smelled disgusting while it was cooking, and it was no better once it was done. Very sad.
I keep looking at this pizza recipe and thinking I’ll try it, but maybe this weekend isn’t a good time after my experience yesterday.
tom
@df: do you live in Ann Arbor?
BruceFromOhio
@trollhattan:
Schroedinger’s President remains a strong runner-up.
bluefoot
OMFG, I’ve said it comments here before but Nate Silver needs to STFU. Three weeks is SHORT to review clinical trial data. He could try talking to someone who has actually submitted a new vaccine for review. Or he could take a look at the briefing documents for the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to get an idea of the scope of data that needs to be scrutinized. It’s all posted on the FDA web site. Or hey, google “summary basis of approval” for a random drug or vaccine and see what’s in the document, keeping in mind this is just the executive summary of the actual documents and data submitted to the FDA.
Here’s one of the Advisory Committee briefing documents for the Pfizer vaccine: https://www.fda.gov/media/144246/download. This is just a briefing document, not the actual data, which gets reviewed prior to approval. And of course the FDA will go back to the company with questions, or requests for more detailed data, especially for safety.As I said in comments previously, even for EUA, the FDA is reviewing the pre-clinical (animal and cell-culture) data, all the Phase 1-3 data, looking at safety, efficacy, sub-group analysis, assessing what should go on the label (who should get the vaccine, what’ s the right dose, what are side effects, what are the contraindications, etc), deciding what the safety and efficacy follow up and monitoring should be once the vaccine is approved.An EUA (emergency use authorization) is already far less than what would normally be submitted to the FDA for a regular approval, with much less long-term safety and efficacy data. But it’s a pandemic, hence EUA review.and as I’ve said before, guidances FDA submission for the vaccines is on the FDA website. Silver or anyone can access that – it’s all public.
WaterGirl
@Baud: No kidding, That one made me want to smack him.
PJ
The thing about pundits like Silver and Klein is that not only are they frequently wrong, and sometimes egregiously so, but they are unshakably smug about their rightness, when they have little or no knowledge about the topic in question.
scav
I mean, it’s only a decision where there are possible differences in efficiency according to age, gender, ethnicity, and possibly other even more individual genetic quirks (allergies, etc) a complex balancing act of real risks, data that may not address all possible needs entirely adequately — the analysis of which is being done in real time in a context where there’s also a degree of vaccine hesitancy because people are concerned there’s not been enough testing alongside the people wanting it yesterday. Poor little number juggler does seem rather out of his depth.
Kent
Why Nate Silver’s hand-wringing over 3 weeks of approval for J&J is complete BULLSHIT is represented by the following two facts:
First, J&J is already manufacturing at full capacity and stockpiling vaccine without waiting for FDA approval so none of this is delaying by one second, the amount of vaccine that will be available by say March 1st.
Second, the US is not even absorbing the current production from Pfizer and Moderna. The distribution networks and phase criteria seem to be the bigger problem than supply of vaccine. According to this morning’s CDC stats, there have been 59,307,800 dosed distributed as of yesterday and 41,210,937 doses administered. Which means approximately 18 million doses are sitting around in the states in storage, waiting to be distributed.
Here in the Pacific Northwest (my wife works for Kaiser with spans the border in both WA and OR) there are just a tremendous amount of fuckups happening with distribution, along with what seems to be a lot of bureaucratic inertia and lack of urgency. I was at Kaiser clinic for a post-heart surgery checkup on Thursday. Across the big open waiting room from me was the Kaiser Covid shot operation for that clinic. So I got to watch them operate for about 1/2 hour while I waited for my appointment. This is what I saw:
One clerk with a laptop on a movable cart screening and checking in people as they arrived. Two rows empty chairs spaced about 10′ apart down the waiting room corridor. And a staff of shot administrators behind the glass wall. People were arriving about 5 min apart, checking in, sitting for a minute or two in the row of chairs until they got called in. LOTS and LOTs of forms to fill out, etc. Basically for 90% of the time the shot clinic was inactive and empty with no one waiting. They were set up to process probably several hundred people per hour. They were getting maybe 10 per hour, and mostly just sitting around on their butts.
BruceFromOhio
@WaterGirl: What happened yesterday?
Suzanne
@Hob: Disagree. I’ve explained opaque and bureaucratic processes to people many times and while I wouldn’t say that anyone jumped from “this is terrible and stupid!” to “this is awesome and amazing!”, I would say that resistance generally ameliorates to a significant degree once they understand why and how. Some people will not accept it in the spirit it’s offered, but some people will, and that matters. Hell, I did a guest post last year about why we can’t just instantly turn abandoned big box stores into hospitals because I got kind of tired of smart people making judgments in the absence of information.
Nate Silver is being a smart-aleck and fuck that, but I guarantee you that there are lots of people wondering why the review takes three weeks, and the idea that we should just be like, “Fuck it, figure it out yourself, go to the website” is not promoting good governance.
bluefoot
@bluefoot: Wierd. Tried to update my comment and all the formatting got messed up. Sorry if it all runs together and is hard to read.
What kills me is that Nate Silver prides himself on being data driven. Well, then, my dude, how about gathering some data? Why not look at what criteria are used to be able to approve a vaccine that will go into everybody – no matter their genetic background, age, access to health care, other medical conditions, etc. And then ask yourself, on a Phase 3 clinical trial of tens of thousands of patients, what’s a reasonable amount of time to analyze the data? How much time should I take to dig into any possible safety concerns? How long should I take to decide what goes on the label? How long should I take to look at other adenovirus vaccine and immunology data in case this J&J vaccine causes immune reactions to other adenoviruses or prevent the patient from getting any future adenovirus-based vaccines?
Ken
@Catherine D.: @df: @Suzanne: XKCD has any number of variations of those ideas; physicists asking biologists why they don’t use simpler models, engineers trying to play the stock market, and so on.
Number 2400 is a pretty good match for this case, if you remember that it’s very rare you can apply “Always try to get data that’s good enough that you don’t need to do statistics on it”. The RNA vaccine data were very, very good; that for other vaccines is more typical. Both, however, will go through the usual careful process.
Hob
Also, it’s really not the case that “there are much worse people out there than Nate Silver and Ezra Klein” = “we shouldn’t bother calling out bullshit that they say.” To whatever degree Silver and Klein are thought of as well-meaning and sometimes intelligent liberal voices, they should be held to a high standard or at least a not-head-smackingly-awful standard, because people are going to take them seriously who would not take Sean Hannity seriously. So we really, really don’t need Silver telling people in effect “if the government takes X amount of time to do this important thing, that means they’re just being lazy and they don’t care about you and we should make that our focus of outrage.” Especially if he obviously can’t be bothered to find out what the hell he’s talking about, and has based his whole reputation (to the extent that he still has one) on being a data guy.
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson:
“After ninety long years as a moocher, Meemaw finally got a job.”
janesays
@MomSense: This times a gajillion. I really don’t get the Ezra hate either.
Amir Khalid
@RSA:
It sounds like you’re describimg a guy who has only a hammer, and so sees everything as a nail.
JWR
Did anyone else catch Adam Schiff on Press The Meat this morning? Chuck Todd was flabbergasted, but I thought it a thing of beauty:
Heh, indeedy
J R in WV
@Wag:
I was just gonna fix this like this, but then I saw you already fixed it. Thanks!
Another Scott
@trollhattan: HEY, don’t crush my brilliant idea like that!!1
Who among us hasn’t asked that question while waiting 30 minutes to get off a plane while one’s next leg assumed a 30 minute layover??!!1
Cheers,
Scott.
Kathleen
@MomSense:
Totally agree.
trollhattan
@Kent:
J&J should be a game-changer for a couple reasons: easy storage requirements and one jab only. Rural and Republican state distribution and administration should be considerably easier than the other two.
We’ll hopefully see soon. Even if it’s less effective than the two-jab options it will be an easier sell and takes hard-partying no-maskers out of the superspreader ranks.
trollhattan
@JWR:
I really like Schiff. He’d make an excellent replacement for DiFi.
Hob
@Suzanne: 1. Describing the overall bureaucratic process is very different than “explain exactly what the agenda is for every day in the next 3 weeks.” The former can be useful, the latter is ridiculous, especially in any process that involves any back and forth between teams and that is by nature designed to find issues that hadn’t been anticipated. So – maybe you meant that as hyperbole, but if so, you ran afoul of Poe’s Law because there are plenty of people who will say stuff like that and mean it literally.
2. Political context matters. It’s one thing to go into a bit more detail about my work process to help others understand why I’m being thorough. It’s another thing if I know that the loudest voices in the room who are demanding an exact accounting of my every move are not the well-meaning ones like yours, but people who are actively looking for excuses to undermine me and details to pick out and misrepresent. In the latter case there’s no amount of detail that’s sufficient to make people’s misgivings go away, because there’s someone working hard to turn every single potentially-unclear-to-a-non-expert thing into a new source of misgivings with which to derail the discussion – and they’re very good at framing those in ways that sound convincing to well-meaning people. Justifying the job becomes an additional full-time job, and one that can’t succeed, because the side that’s willing to be dishonest has an inherent advantage in that game.
Ken
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Derek Lowe’s “In the Pipeline” blog has had some discussion of the variants. This relatively-recent post summarizes some of the data, and the vaccines provide some protection against the new mutations, although at a lower level than against the baseline. Also, the immune system will, on exposure to the viral mutations, start its own round of mutations to refine the existing stock of antibodies.
janesays
@Beautifulplumage: That’s a fair assessment.
WhatsMyNym
Part of the reason it takes time is the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine candidate takes so long to review is it’s still in Phase III of the trials. The trial is only 40,000 people, so a very limited subset of the population.
janesays
@trollhattan: I love Schiff and would definitely see him as a huge upgrade over DiFi (not that it’s a particularly high bar to clear), but I want Katie Porter in that seat when it opens up. I know she’s only in her second term in Congress, but I think she’ll be more than ready to fill that role by 2024.
RaflW
Mostly wrong, always pretentious Matt Y had to weigh in on that Silver thread, of course.
[forehead slap]
Benw
@WaterGirl: if I can make a good pizza with that recipe, anyone can!
Another Scott
@Baud: I always liked TNC’s “Talk to me like I’m stupid” posts.
Also too: “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
Biden apparently has a similar philosophy.
Cheers,
Scott.
dmsilev
@WhatsMyNym: Technically, Pfizer and Moderna are still running their Phase III trials as well, to gather longer-term safety and efficacy data. There’s an ethical issue mixed in there as well: Now that we know the vaccines work pretty well, do we give real vaccinations to the placebo group, or do we continue with the study to get better data. Last time Il looked, expert opinion and policy was coming down on the “give the placebo group the real thing” side, but it was a real concern.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
Yes, and that post was amazingly good!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: That’s why the Good Lord created pizza delivery. About a month ago I the smoke alarm went off while I was toasting bread. I took that as a sign from the Almighty that I was not to “cook” or “prepare” any of my food but rely on the kindness of take out. I’m much happier now.
Ken
@trollhattan: Your story reminds me of the old joke about the efficiency expert and the orchestra.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: Shame about the bread. I’ve generally had pretty good luck with the KA recipes, but I guess nobody has a perfect record. Can definitely recommend the pizza recipe though. Not at all difficult, and very good.
RaflW
@trollhattan: Would I be wrong to think that perhaps the J&J vaccine, given the one-dose ease, but perhaps lower effectiveness, would make sense for people age 18-49 (or some such upper bound)?
I may be mixing up the various vaccines in the pipeline, but I think I saw that this new one is somewhat less great at preventing symptoms, but does just about as well at preventing very serious/deadly cases. So, given the younger population has generally fared better at survival vaccine-free, giving a single jab that gets your death-chances very low seems alright.
Maybe, anyway. And even if it’s not age-targeted, unless the J&J manufacturing capacity could be allocated to a somewhat better vaccine, if this makes it the next three weeks of testing and approvals, yes roll it out. Get it in people!
(eta: Is there one that is approved — or seeking approval — for under 18 y.o.? I think I’ve seen 16 as the lower bound for one of ’em)
different-church-lady
@MomSense: Which is more tedious: the professional take-havers, or the constant complaining about take-havers?
Kathleen
@JWR: Did Chuckles pee in his chair? (Please please please please…)
J R in WV
@RaflW:
OK, I thought Matt was really funny here, and kind of put Nate into a proper space, both at the same time. Well done, Matt~!!~
ETA fix a typo…
bluefoot
@Another Scott: I miss the TNC “Talk to me like I’m stupid” posts. They were so informative….I remember taking notes on some of those posts for subjects I didn’t know a lot about.
Now that I think about it, “talk to me like I’m stupid” promoted listening and probably helped prevent people from spouting off about subjects with which they weren’t familiar.
JWR
@trollhattan:
Todd teased out a bit about Schiff possibly landing a new gig, but I don’t think it was DiFi’s. But yeah, he sounded pissed!
J R in WV
@JWR:
I may have heard aimless gossip that Schiff is interested in the CA AG position, maybe cut down on the commute cross-country, which is a long flight, coast to coast.
Brachiator
@bluefoot:
Yep. This was really a lot of good stuff.
dm
@trollhattan: Oh, sure. There’s no need to relitigate Klein’s question now — it was pretty well covered when Mistermix brought it up last week — but I think he was talking prospectively: why not look into this for the future?
My point was really that the hot-takes approach to Twitter is a pretty destructive mental habit to get into. You often discover if you actually follow the link that an article or speech says nothing like what it’s being caricatured as saying by the twit. Twitter is the ne-plus-ultra in “out of context”.
(One also gets sucked into the belief that the Twittersphere is more significant than it actually is.)
Another Scott
Relatedly, …
Understanding what each of the vaccines is good for, and what they’re not good for, is important. It takes time.
Cheers,
Scott.
JWR
@Kathleen:
Well, he did have that gobsmacked expression going on. So, maybe?
;)
Bobby Thomson
@Kent: one of the reasons we should just say everyone over 65 (or pick a number) can get it now and other doses go out on a case by case basis. Easy to communicate, easy to understand, easy to enforce, etc.
JWR
@J R in WV:
That would be a good fit.
WhatsMyNym
The Precision Vaccinations website carries up to date information on all of the vaccinations.
Almost Retired
@Kent: Interesting about Chile. How are they physically handling the administration of the vaccine? Stadiums? Drug stores? Doctor’s offices? Mass vaccination centers? Walk up or appointment?
WaterGirl
@BruceFromOhio: I explained earlier in that comment. My first total loser recipe from King Arthur Flour. Someone else here was making it last week, and I had been thinking of trying that recipe since the pandemic started, so I made it this weekend.
Total bust. Threw the whole thing out.
WhatsMyNym
@Kent: Here on the North Olympic Peninsula (about 105,000 pop.) we’re just stuck waiting for more vaccine. Drive thru with appointments is the preferred way.
WaterGirl
@Benw: I’ll try that one next week. I’m a bit intimidated by the folding thing, but I am guessing that it is much simpler than I am imagining it to be.
Today I am trying a Chicago-style pan pizza recipe.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
People who complain that it takes too long or can be built in minutes have never made anything in their lives.
I once had a customer who complained about how long it took to create the molds for him to create plastic bottles. One day he came to pick up some parts that we were just finishing up. We told him it would take 6 to 8 hrs to finish and he said he’d wait. About 3 hrs in he was pacing so I gave him something to do. Minimal skill/effort, just something to get him quiet. At the end he told me he’d never again question the time or the money, he just never realized the work it took to get from A to Z, all the steps, all the detail, all the skills learned. People know what they do, they don’t have a clue what most other people do.
WaterGirl
@Kathleen: Yeah, earlier this week my Breville countertop oven started groaning with a scary sound when I turned it on, so I turned it off immediately, and about 5 minutes later I had the identical item ordered again on Amazon.
I would say I use that 5-10x for every time I could/heat something in my regular oven, and it was over 5 years old, so that’s okay.
It doesn’t have a large footprint, but it holds a 10×10 pan and a 12″ pizza pan easily. Love, love, love it.
I unpacked it yesterday but it’s in quarantine for another day or two, and I can’t wait to have it back in operation again.
(BOV845BSS Smart Oven Pro Convection Countertop Oven, Brushed Stainless Steel)
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I will try the pizza recipe next next week and report back. You and BenW can’t both be wrong.
What do you think of the King Arthur Flour Favorite Fudge Cake recipe? I think it’s the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made, particularly when I used cake flour instead of the unbleached flour that was in the recipe.
Their flour is the only flour i use.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: I wonder if Impeachment I made him realize that he missed his previous role.
PJ
@different-church-lady: “Do you think it’s easy, having a freshly crafted opinion about everything in the news? D’ya think it’s just a lark, coming up with critical or contrarian perspectives on things you know absolutely nothing about? It’s ‘ard work, it is, and unless yer prepared to get down in the dirt and mine those takes with me, why don’t you shut yer gob and be grateful for all the tweets I’ve gifted you with!”
Starboard Tack
@WaterGirl:
I looked at the Breville ovens at BB&B last week. I’m trying to decide between the Oven Pro and Oven Air, and wondering if the Oven Air is worth the extra money, since I mostly only cook for myself. Thoughts anyone??
ETA: I’d like to be able to put in around a 4 qt. enameled Dutch oven.
Kathleen
@JWR: Heh heh. A girl can dream, can’t she?
WhatsMyNym
Via Reuters
ETA: They going to use Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer for now.
dnfree
@trollhattan: the Mythical Man-Month! Adding programmers to a project that is running late makes it run later. If it takes nine months to make a baby, the process can’t be speeded up to one month by assigning nine women.
Kent
every town and neighborhood in Chile has government run public health clinics that handle all vaccines. Not just Covid. I think the fancier private clinics are also doing it. But you can go into any corner public health clinic and get your shot same as for any other shot. That is also how they vaccinate all kids in normal years. Through the local public clinics not your doctors office. Here in the US we don’t have any comparable public health network. We have public Medicaid clinics here and there but they don’t serve the whole population like the clinics in Chile.
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: Though I don’t cook I obsess over things like convection ovens and Ninja grills. My fear is that I won’t be able to figure out how to turn them on.
Almost Retired
@Kent: It all seems so…..I don’t know……sane and efficient?!? Thanks for the info.
Starboard Tack
@dnfree:
It’s the beginning of The Death March.
Geminid
@Beautifulplumage: There are a lot of unanswered questions about the polling in the last election. Silver could be trying to answer them, but I think he lacks the base of social science knowledge, and the work ethic to acquire and apply it. He has an established reputation as a political analyst, but as far as I can see he basically is a poll aggregator. Silver likes attention though, and the next set of elections won’t crank up for a year or so. Hence the foray into health science. Just a dilettente.
Steve in the ATL
I clearly have not smoked enough pot to read balloon juice today
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Thanks for the report.
We’ve got a white Cuisinart convection toaster oven that I use a lot, but it’s showing its age (lots of discoloration from oils, etc., over the years). Never had a problem with it, but something new (and a little larger) would be nice.
We really need to redo our kitchen and replace our ~ 1963 vintage GE drop-in 27″ electric range with push-button controls (it’s the Future!!), but who knows when that will happen…
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
Yep. The stupid and ridiculous stuff we do here in order to preserve the profit and initiative of private medicine is just obscene.
The Pale Scot
@Catherine D.:
“all you have to do is”
@df:
“why don’t you just…” and “I’m not an expert, but…”
These memes are being beaten to death in the Uk pundit crowd trying to “it’s simples” their way into a solution for leaving the Single Market. Which mostly consists of the EU remaking their treaties to solve the UK’s problems. “You won, get on with it and go away” doesn’t get much traction
Obdurodon
I’ve resorted to blocking Alex Tabarrok and a couple of others on Twitter because of the same impatience regarding AstraZeneca. Day after day, barrages of “free the AZ vaccine” and little else, even though there are plenty of other COVID-related topics to discuss. All kindly retweeted by my friends, whose opinions on other matters I still value, hence the block. I really really wish we could move faster, but I’m also very wary of giving the anti-vaccine brigade any ammunition. The pace we’re at seems like a reasonable compromise.
Starboard Tack
@Another Scott:
I grew up with one of those. The push buttons get corroded and hinky. Real pain.
The Pale Scot
@df:
Where do I sign up?
Jim Appleton
@dnfree: SSSSHHH!
My wife just agreed to me … getting to know the other eight.
Matt McIrvin
@df: Side effects may include transformation into a hairy protohuman, a burning energy being or a swirling vortex in the floor.
WaterGirl
@Starboard Tack: I looked at the air at some point in the past year, coveting the air fryer-ness. the more I looked, the more I decided against that. If I recall correctly, it takes a lot more space and it’s harder to clean.
If you get the Air, let me know how it goes. If you get the one I have, you will fall in love with it for sure. Cole has one, too.
WaterGirl
@Starboard Tack: Mine fits with room to spare. I just checked, and it’s a 3 qt. My 10 x 10 square casserole dish fits, too. As does the 12″ diameter pizza pan. As long as none of your dimensions go over 12 – including handles – you should be good.
Ruckus
@Kent:
When I got my first shot I had time to watch the VA system work. There were at least 15 people involved that one could see. There had to be more because someone had to get the Pfizer vaccine out of -80 deg storage, know when it could go into the shot room etc. There were 6 people giving shots, 2 people running the after shot waiting area, 4 people out front checking people into the system by appointment and walk in, 2 or 3 people at the entry point and people watching the waiting area, calling your number for the shot and directing but the entire thing took maybe 10 minutes other than the post shot time. They do 6 shots at a time as that is the doses per vial for Pfizer. To do this properly in a mass fashion takes coordination and planning and effort. Imagine doing this on a country wide scale with distribution, how many providers, locations, rules/restrictions, safety, a government that didn’t give a fuck – or actually wanted to fuck this up. That we’ve seen the numbers of people vaccinated so far is actually rather amazing to me.
Starboard Tack
@WaterGirl:
Who makes that one? Is it cast iron?
Ken
Do I get to choose which?
WaterGirl
@Starboard Tack: It’s Le Creuset. They are cast iron, covered with enamel. You get the benefit of cast iron, but easy cleanup.
Starboard Tack
@WaterGirl:
Oh, I’d love Le Crueset. I didn’t know they made square. Amazon wants ~$300 for a 3.5 qt. round. ATK picked Cuisinart as a budget best buy, and there’s always Lodge.
WaterGirl
@Starboard Tack: I got mine at TJ Maxx for something like $75. I was thrilled!
If you have one of those, maybe you can find a good bargain once we can get back to shopping again
I’m with you on the shape, I think the square ones are much more handsome.
Jim Appleton
@WaterGirl: I’m heavily into lots of Lodge tripods, wood coals or charcoal briquets underneath and on top, don’t have problems with cleanup except for high acid stuff, which I tend to do elsewhere. Am I missing something?
Pizza in a wood-fired Lodge is pretty special …
WaterGirl
@Jim Appleton: Then you definitely want plain old regular cast iron!
Starboard Tack
@WaterGirl:
Do you have a problem with things overcooking in the corners?
WaterGirl
@Starboard Tack: I do not have a problem with that. The heat is well distributed.
Starboard Tack
@WaterGirl:
Tx.
Bill Arnold
21 days times 3000 US residents per day, 60000 deaths. The appropriate phrasing is “10s of thousands of people will die”. E.g. what if the writer had said “dozens of people could die”. This would also be true.
Anyway the point is that the US is losing 3000 people per day, and the economy is being damaged on the order of several billions of dollars per day, due to a raging pandemic. This is a certainty. What is the expected (over all vaccine possibilities including the disaster possibilities, given the type of vaccine and phase 1/phase 2 trial information as a prior) number of deaths for a rushed vaccine approval and phased and monitored rollout, e.g. the Sputnik vaccine. Has there ever been a vaccine (modern, not smallpox) that caused 60000 deaths plus 10 times that much lifelong (potentially) morbidity? Etc.
That’s the sort of utilitarian thinking driving Nate.
StringOnAStick
I have been seeing something like 91\% for the Sputnik vaccine; am I the only one who looks at that data and the Russian government record on truth about Covid cases and thinks that % is BS?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bill Arnold: I bet the people at the FDA are completely unaware of the stakes involved. Right?
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold:
The problem is that you have to take into account that other people won’t use a bloodless utilitarian calculus–when deciding things like whether to take a vaccine, most people are very loss-averse and will accept a far greater risk from inaction than from getting the vaccine. So even something that kills or injures a small number of people, like the 1950s Cutter incident or the 1970s swine-flu-vaccine debacle, will end up killing many thousands more by making people mistrust the vaccines and not get them.
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: I read that Lancet had a report on the phase three trials for the Sputnik 5 vaccine. The claim of 91% effectiveness sounded legit, but I only read an article about the Lancet article.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Does she get a flu shot? In a good year that’s about 50% effective.
karen marie
@WaterGirl: That is a gorgeous dutch oven! What brand is it
Ahh, your answer – Le Creuset.
I’m too old to spend $300 on a dutch oven. I’d have to live to 120 to make it economically sensible. Oh well!
WaterGirl
@karen marie: You may not have seen my followup comment – I found it at TJ Maxx for something like $75. You can get some really great deals on cookware at TJ Maxx.
Jim Appleton
@WaterGirl: XOX. You’re a center of gravity.