538 and Nate Silver are Garbage

[Kyle]

You know Nate Silver, the guy who started 538 and who famously set up a website to predict elections, and then when his predictions were egregiously wrong he claimed he doesn't make predictions, just presents statistic (which is a disingenuous, if not an outright lie). So today I learned that Nate Silver is one of these conspiracy spreading people that has talked incessantly about how COVID-19 was maintained in a lab and the pandemic started when there was a leak from the lab. We know this isn't true. As science has said from the beginning (and confirmed repeatedly) the pandemic originated when the virus jumped from animals to humans in a live seafood market.

"So what?" you may ask. So who cares if he said it was a lab leak and it was a live food market. Well, remember that the lab leak conspiracy was pushed in a major way by Donald Trump during his presidency and was part of his racist efforts to vilify Asian people for bringing the "China virus" to our country. You will also remember that the amplification of these anti-Asian sentiments led to a huge increase in violent hate crimes committed against Asian people in our country. Oh, and you know who else was amplifying this? Nate Silver.

I have no idea why the "I just give you the stats" guy wanted to be involved in this conspiracy effort. But like I said shortly after the 2016 election- fuck Nate Silver. Fuck 538. They're frauds. Nate Silver is a fraud. He's a stats dude that got lucky one election and is desperately trying to stay relevant with pathetic tactics. Fuck you Nate Silver.

If you want to criticize the Chinese government- there's a wealth of reasons to justify that. But to serve as an online-amplifier for bullshit conspiracy theories that were used for racist ends? Fuck you. You're garbage, Nate Silver.

[Phoebe]

Silver fell prey to a common problem during the pandemic: people with no relevant expertise deciding they were suddenly highly specific medical and public health experts. Silver has been a huge blowhard on this topic, regularly using his public voice to undermine real experts on vaccines and virus transmission and so forth. There was a particularly sad moment when he compared school closures due to staff shortages to the war in Iraq. It was nice because all at once you could see how irrational he is about covid and how little he gives a s*** about human life that was lost or damaged horribly in the war.

I'm not sure if he still thinks it's neurotic for vaccinated people to wear a mask on a plane or if that was just a temporary position he held. Dumb.

[Kyle]

Yeah. Nate Silver is a garbage person.