Top all-time · #1894
Aatish Bhatia
Personal blog · aatishb.comsciencemath
Aatish Bhatia's personal blog at aatishb.com covers science and math. Since 2017, 41 different Hacker News readers have linked it 55 times, most often “Log-log plot of new vs. total Covid-19 cases by country”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Log-log plot of new vs. total Covid-19 cases by country12 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2020-03-27
- Entropy explained, with sheep (2016)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-11-10
- The Multiplicative Power of Masks5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-09-08
- Dissonance: A journey through musical possibility space3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-12-02
- Climate Toy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-09-14
- Experiment with Penrose Tilings and other patterns2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-01
What Hacker News says?
> For anybody else reading that's unaware: Sweden is still in the earlier stages of growth, not yet peaking in total cases [1]. Not really, they seem to have leveled off alongside Canada, the US and the UK. [1] In fact, your own link says as much, the number of daily new cases in your link has been constant for at least a week. > ...but they already have 6x the per-capita death rate of either of their neighbors, Nor…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US&location=United+Kingdom
on “A Third Solution”Submitted Simple circuits can create complex behaviors as a story · 283 points
HN discussionThe crux of the issue is this: Neither I nor the Swedes believe that you can keep this disease at bay by hiding indoors for a few months and then opening back up well in advance of a vaccine which appears to be the entire world's game plan. I think it's fair to say there won't be a vaccine for 12-18 months, and we're not as a society prepared to stay indoors for that long. Not to mention even with complete lockdowns…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US&location=United+Kingdom
on “A Third Solution”Submitted Log-log plot of new vs. total Covid-19 cases by country as a story · 279 points
HN discussionThis is good news, considering they've apparently been also able to reduce the number of new confirmed cases [1]. [1] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/
Comment linking /covidtrends/
on “Ask HN: Who Is Firing?”Submitted Entropy explained, with sheep (2016) as a story · 216 points
HN discussion> HIV is so fundamentally different Coronaviruses are very different. We've rarely had any this deadly before. All vaccines are different; they're not one blanket thing. Smallpox vaccines are attenuated virus (a virus that has mutated to be benign in humans; in the case of Smallpox, the first vaccine by Jenner was injecting people with Horsepox). Most Influenza vaccines are heat treated/inactivated virus. In all cas…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?data=deaths
on “Coronavirus: Oxford vaccine triggers immune response”Submitted Gauss’s “Remarkable Theorem” and the best way to hold a pizza slice (2014) as a story · 147 points
HN discussionI'm neutral on the market right now, I don't think it's entirely unfairly priced. NASDAQ is in the best shape of the indices because tech companies don't seem hugely affected by all this insanity. Most major investment banks are expecting a huge boom in Q4/Q1 and return to business as usual. COVID new cases are trending downwards across all major economies (except the US, to follow soon) [1] I'm actually feeling bet…
Comment linking /covidtrends/
on “I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too”Submitted Experiment with Penrose Tilings and other patterns as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> So, given that I was quoting global figures for the flu, on an apples-to-apples basis it seems like covid is about 10x the flu at the moment, in the US, ignoring the fact that it could be much worse without the lockdowns. At about 10 weeks into the H1N1 influenza pandemic, we had a CFR of between 0.1 and 5.1% depending on the country as compared to 0.07 to 14.93% for COVID. H1N1 ended up with an actual IFR of 0.02…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US&location=United+Kingdom
on “Hundreds of thousands in L.A. may have been infected with coronavirus: study”Submitted The Multiplicative Power of Masks as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIllegal, no, but a massive overreaction. This is why the Swedish model (of telling people to take reasonable steps like not getting too close, and staying home when sick, and away from old people) is proving so successful. They've even started to see a flattening of the curve alongside the rest of the world without lockdowns . [1, 2] [1] https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-epidemiologist-covid-1... [2] https://aat…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US&location=United+Kingdom
on “Hundreds of thousands in L.A. may have been infected with coronavirus: study”Submitted Mask Math as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe graphs are very clear, there are examples of countries in which it worked great. > "people won't comply with such police-state dystopian policies" The "but muh freedom" argument is so tired. If folks had stayed in for a few weeks at the start, it would be substantially over now as evidenced by all the countries in which it's substantially over. Instead by going out like petulant children who won't be told no, we…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Australia&location=China&location=New+Zealand&location=Taiwan&location=US
on “No excess deaths in Sweden compared to the last ten years”Submitted How to Tell If We're Beating Covid-19 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionLockdowns do 100% work, if you stay inside you literally cannot catch a respiratory illness. You stay inside for 3 weeks and it will literally end the respiratory illness unless there's another reservoir you've failed to account for. Non-compliance however kneecaps the ability of lockdowns to be effective, leaving you in a worst-of-all-worlds situation with a damaged economy and a largely unaffected disease curve. I…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Australia&location=China&location=New+Zealand&location=Taiwan&location=US
on “No excess deaths in Sweden compared to the last ten years”Submitted Dissonance: A journey through musical possibility space as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI just looked at the pictures. What they recommended. https://aatishb.com/images/2014/08/pizza-fold-hold.png vs What I do. https://assets.bonappetit.com/photos/5a9dd665eb730726d6c7ec1... If the article said to fold it in half, then we are in agreement. But the picture they provided didn't show that.
Comment linking /images/2014/08/pizza-fold-hold.png
on “Gauss’s “Remarkable Theorem” and the best way to hold a pizza slice (2014)”Submitted The Multiplicative Power of Masks – Explorable Essay on How Masks Can End Covid as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis doesn't really mesh with the situation on the ground. I think it does: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?scale=linear&trendline=fals...
Comment linking /covidtrends/?scale=linear&trendline=false&location=Hong+Kong&location=Singapore&location=South+Korea&location=Taiwan
on “Coronavirus doctor's diary: Why are people remaining ill for so long?”Submitted Pattern Collider as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> As for your final paragraph, it is wholly unreasonable to imply that covid (which is killing thousands of Americans per day despite a massive distancing effort) is less serious than the flu (which has persisted over a much longer period of time and which was not subject to special responses). I didn't say or imply that. It's worse than the flu, probably 5-10X worse. Not bad, not great. I'm suggesting that people a…
Comment linking /covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US
on “California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining”Submitted Entropy Explained, with Sheep (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSweden has actually leveled off and had flat new case growth over the last week [1], same as in Canada where they have shut the world down (in terms of flatness not numbers). Further CFR is almost exclusively based on age of acquisition and the extent to which hospitals are available. In Sweden hospitals are available. The disease is exactly the same everywhere so it’s much more to do with demographics. I mean they’…
Comment linking /covidtrends/
on “California Covid-19 traffic report finds silver lining”Submitted Why Masks Work Better Than You Think: An Interactive Essay as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>South Korea is also contemplating murder charges against a church. They also did massive contact tracing when they were still under 100 cases. South Korea took this massively seriously. >As did Taiwan after Wuhan. Taiwan also rationed emergency supplies. Here's what Taiwan did: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taiwan-covid-19-lessons-1.5... . But they didn't mass-close businesses. That's what causes the economic da…
on “Science without Validation in a World without Meaning”Submitted Interactive Mask Simulator as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJust in case you haven't seen it, I'm a big fan of this [0] chart, which plots new weekly cases against cumulative total, both axes on a log scale. It has a whole video explanation [1] if you're interested in the logic behind it. [0]: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/ [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc
Comment linking /covidtrends/
on “Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots”Submitted Climate Toy as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
