Liberal Pollster: There Were a Lot of Bad Takes Concerning How Florida Dealt with COVID

Nate Silver often draws sighs from conservatives with his usually liberal takes, but a broken clock is right twice a day. And sometimes it’s on issues louder than others. The FiveThirtyEight founder has recently doled out some observations and data analyses that probably have infuriated his liberal audience because—well, they’re not really attacking Republicans so much as it is ripping Democrats and the media for peddling fake narratives on COVID.

He ripped Anthony Fauci for gaslighting us on vaccines when the former said that the vaccinated still have to remain in their homes. He’s thrown cold water on the panic peddlers for ginning up fake narratives on a fourth COVID wave. And now his latest take is sure to drive his audience insane by declaring that given the data set so far, Florida wasn’t a disaster in managing COVID, noting that “there are a lot of bad takes about Florida.”

Florida is 28th in the US in COVID deaths per capita and 22nd in the US in COVID cases per capita. In other words, pretty much right at the average. There are a lot of bad takes about Florida. https://t.co/qTD00nn5YQ
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 27, 2021

One way in which COVID media coverage is skewed is there's tons of attention to wherever cases are rising but little to where they're declining. e.g. Cases are *plunging* in NYC right now but there's almost no stories about that after weeks of scary news about variants, etc. pic.twitter.com/E91t5G7kZT
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 25, 2021

Younger people making up a growing *share* of hospitalizations is a good thing, NYT! It's because old people are getting hospitalized much less! Yes the raw number of young people being hospitalized is up in Michigan, but not really nationally.https://t.co/D2G2gaNgtQ pic.twitter.com/sU3vm8QBav
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 25, 2021

Data on national hospitalization rates by age here. For age 18-49 (orange line) they've swayed around a bit but pretty steady and fairly low.https://t.co/P3gMdtsLoj pic.twitter.com/IUQliVNCTu
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 25, 2021

Guy noted three reasons why Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is so hated by the liberal media. He had the audacity to win the 2018 gubernatorial election, he’s the heir apparent to the Trump coalition, and he’s told the media and the COVID experts to shove it and proved them wrong at every turn. Hell, even Bill Maher has credited DeSantis with his handling of COVID, along with bashing liberals who are as grossly misinformed about COVID as the people they supposedly think are neanderthals on the issue.