Exponential growth and epidemics
Why Hacker News recommends it
During the early COVID-19 period, HN commenters linked it as the clearest quick explanation of what exponential growth means for an epidemic.
What it is
A short 3Blue1Brown primer on exponential and logistic growth, using early COVID-19 case data to show how epidemics grow and eventually level off. It explains why small changes in growth rate make enormous differences in outcomes.
Recommended by 10 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec brownbat · 2020-03 · on “Show HN: Epidemic Simulator”
Just watched the 3brown1blue video today, which talks about exponential growth and fixes it to the latest actual COVID-19 numbers. Really helped it all click. [this video] Edit: separate HN discussion: [LINK]
Strong rec thomasmg · 2020-03 · on “Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat”
To be exact, it's a "logistic curve", which initially is exponential. From this 3Blue1Brown excellent video: [this video]
Strong rec asix66 · 2020-03 · on “Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?”
And those who don't understand, or need a refresher on, exponential growth should watch this great video by 3Blue1Brown. Exponential growth and epidemics: [this video]
Strong rec Fej · 2020-03 · on “‘It looks like a war zone’: NJ docs say hospitals under siege, supplies low”
I live in Bergen County. There is a lack of panic - although I'm on the north side, opposite of the most infected parts. I went grocery shopping earlier today, there were a few people with masks but no one was really trying to keep a distance from others. Plenty of people there, perhaps a few less than usual. At times there are so many people that they have to restrict entry into the store and create a line outside (possibly to help with social distancing, but there are still too many people in the store for that to matter). It's the opposite of social distancing. The disaster in NYC, and the counties immediately north/east of Bergen (Westchester, Rockland) is going to spill over. We're not
Recommends officialjunk · 2020-03 · on “Show HN: HN reader that filters out COV**-19 and Coronavir** articles”
regardless of what you hear, china takes outbreaks very seriously and responds aggressively. the general population in china also takes it very seriously. normal behavior response in china looks like over reaction in the us. please watch this video by 3blue1brown [this video] china is past its inflection point and we have yet to determine where our inflection point will be. everyone should be changing your behavior now. the fact that sars-cov didn’t get as far in 2002 as sars-cov-2 virus is currently going should be concerning. the us could ignore prior outbreaks because china is aggressive to stop it.
Recommends willis936 · 2020-03 · on “Covid-19 is now officially a pandemic, WHO says”
But months ago they really couldn’t have known. We still don’t know how many will be infected. All we can do is take precautionary measures. The WHO messaging should have been stronger and earlier, but it isn’t their fault for not labeling a pandemic months ago. Granted, there was enough data and research done to squarely label this as a pandemic, and that’s really where I assign blame on them. Here is a neat video that helps put things in perspective for most any viewer. [this video]
Recommends arendtio · 2020-03 · on “Open letter from Italy to the international scientific community”
Maybe they should include this 3Blue1Brown video to explain what 'exponential' means in this context: [this video]
Recommends carapace · 2020-03 · on “Shelter in place for Bay Area counties”
This is the time to resort to drastic measures to prevent drastic consequences. Have you seen this from 3Blue1Brown: [this video] "Exponential growth and epidemics" ?