Mathematics Hothouse

‘A virus is a small collection of genetic code surrounded by a protein coat’. A human being is a collection of genetic code enclosed in a physical body.

‘Viruses infect cells and use components of the host cell to survive and make copies of themselves’. Human beings live on earth and commandeer its resources to survive and make copies of themselves.

‘Viruses can replicate only inside the living cells of an organism’. Human beings can reproduce only on this planet because earth makes homeostasis – and therefore life – possible.

‘Often, they kill the host cell in the process, and cause damage to the host organism’. Often, they destroy essential elements of the earth in the process, and cause damage to the host planet.

In other words, our lungs are home to the corona virus just as the earth is home to us, and it seems we…

Some Indians have been asking the government “Why did you send vaccines meant for our children abroad?”

It’s common knowledge that when Serum Institute of India (SII) agreed to produce the millions of vaccines the world needed last year there were certain licensing agreements with AstraZeneca, UK.

One of them was the WTO’s stipulation that 84% (not sure of this number) of the manufactured vaccine was to go to the COVAX Facility for distribution to low- and middle-income countries, ninety-two of them.

1.1 billion vaccines were apparently manufactured last year on these terms. So the vaccines sent abroad were not the ones “meant for our children”.

The picture is different this year. India has millions of cases and needs millions of vaccines. So India has had to renege on the deal to supply vaccines to COVAX countries. For a while, the country did gamely try to live up to…

Let’s start with a joke:

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician are sitting in a street café one morning watching an empty store on the other side of the street.They see someone unlock the store and go in.Time passes.Someone else goes in. More time passes. Then three people come out.

The physicist says, “Our measurements weren’t accurate.” The biologist says, “The two people who went in must have reproduced.” The mathematician says, “If one more person enters the store, it will be empty.”

Of course the joke here is that the mathematician is holding the absurd belief that there are a negative number of people in the store.¹ The joke is built on our shared knowledge that although negative numbers make sense in some contexts, they aren’t sensible in the present context. But the knowledge that negative numbers do make sense in some contexts shouldn’t be taken for…