FiveThirtyEight editor Nate Silver on the "known unknowns" of Covid-19 and the need for "humility"

Reliable Sources

CNN

News

3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, talks with Brian Stelter about Covid-19 data and media coverage of the pandemic. From the death rate to the daily number of tests, "any one indicator is going to have its flaws," Silver says. He addresses flaws in the conversation about "reopening" and the predictions of new waves of infections. While Silver says there is a relationship between social distancing efforts and rates of transmission, he warns that "trying to pick up a clear signal amidst noisy data when there are marginal changes being made" is very complicated. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's the data telling us about the fight against COVID-19? And what's the data not revealing?
0:08.0	What are the known unknowns about this pandemic?
0:12.0	Those are a few of the questions for this week's
0:15.1	reliable sources podcast. Let's cue the music and welcome in here. I'm Brian
0:21.3	Stelter and this is our weekly podcast, our chance to go in depth with media leaders and newsmakers talking about how the news is made, how we know what's reliable. And of course that's been a key question
0:36.2	for the past couple of months as most of us have been in various states of lockdown.
0:42.3	Now we're seeing restrictions changing. Some
0:46.7	states, some localities gradually opening back up. So what should we be
0:52.0	watching for? What data, what numbers, what models are most important?
0:57.0	And how can we make sure that we are reopening, so to speak, in the safest possible way. Let's talk about all of that
1:05.3	with Nate Silver. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of 538, the data-driven news
1:11.7	outlet known for creative modeling for tracking elections and
1:15.8	sports. Now he doesn't have a Corona model but if you go to 538.com there is some
1:21.4	really helpful interactive graphics showing various models about the
1:25.7	pandemic and how they compare to each other. Now 538 also has its own podcast all about COVID-19. It is called Podcast 19. But now let's
1:36.8	welcome Nate to this podcast for a conversation about the media and the news
1:40.9	coverage of what's unfolding.
1:43.0	Hey, Nate, thanks for joining me.
1:45.0	Hey, thank you, Brian.
1:46.0	Happy to be on. I would love to hear from you first and foremost about what numbers and what data you are paying attention to.
1:54.0	If people visit 538.com, they can see some wonderful
1:57.5	interactives, really helpful graphics,
	...

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