Prominent statistician Nate Silver ripped City Hall’s closure of schools on Twitter Wednesday — and said parents should be “furious” with the controversial measure.
The data don said he was especially perplexed by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reliance on a 3 percent infection rate trigger for shuttering the nation’s largest school system.
“I don’t get why NYC feels bound to stick by a 3% positivity rule for closing schools when we know more about the virus now, including relatively low rates of transmission in schools,” he wrote. “If I were a parent I’d be furious.”
Critics have questioned de Blasio and the city teachers union for their devotion to the metric — and Silver joined that chorus with a full-throated rebuke.
“It’s not as though 3% is some tried-and-true, empirically-derived heuristic that’s proven robust over many past pandemics,” he continued in a second posting. “Everybody is just making this s— up as they go along! It’s completely arbitrary.”
The conspicuous scolding from Silver, whose account has 3.6 million followers, flushed out a response from City Hall spokesman Bill Neidhardt, who mimicked Silver’s phrasing in his responding tweet.
“I don’t get why you’d want public health officials to set standards and then move them around willy nilly,” he wrote. “I don’t get why you’d want schools to stay open without adjustments during higher COVID levels when they are designed to be safe at lower citywide spread levels.”
In expanding his broadside, Silver also noted the confusing disparity in infection rates presented to the public by the state and city Wednesday.
“Also, the state’s data still has 7-day average positivity in NYC at under 3% (more specifically, 2.5%),” he noted.
Some parents have highlighted minimal infection rates in DOE testing of school populations in questioning the 3 percent threshold.
De Blasio has defended his adherence to the number, asserting that it was necessary to stick to the original standard amid growing concern over a citywide flareup.