Category: Articles

Do you remember the days of 2020? Do you remember the uncertainty, the anxiety, and the constantly changing advice? Do you remember waking up every day, checking the news hoping for something better, but just seeing bad news after bad news? Perhaps, one of the most disheartening aspects of it was the expectations of scientists vs. what actually happened. At every turn, the virus proved more mysterious, complex, and unpredictable than what was anticipated. Every time, we thought that it was over and that we could declare mission accomplished, there was always something unexpected waiting for us. Taking a look back at some of these different moments during the Pandemic, my hope is to depict how the virus surprised us at every turn, and the lessons that we can take away for the next major Infectious Disease Outbreak.

The first surprise that the virus threw at us was that the majority of us believed that our vaccines produced something known as sterilizing immunity. This was the ideal scenario because it meant that not only did the vaccine reduce the incidence of symptomatic and severe disease. However, it also reduced the incidence of infection and how frequently it was transmitted. This meant that, even if someone could not or chose not to get vaccinated, they would effectively be protected because the people around them could not spread the infection. This would decrease the overall community burden of Covid, along with the number of hospitalizations and deaths. Initially, it seemed like our vaccines had the potential to do this. For instance, there were studies in early 2021 showing that “The Pfizer vaccine reduced asymptomatic cases by 89.4%, and symptomatic cases by 93.7%”(Israeli Studies find Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine reduces transmission). Similarly, many Israeli studies in the early part of 2021 observed the phenomenon that “Vaccines reduced the viral load in the respiratory tract of infected individuals, compared to unvaccinated people who were infected”(Israeli Studies find Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine reduces transmission). Additionally, as Israel and the United States begun vaccinating their population, cases dramatically decreased. For instance, from January to May, Covid cases in Israel decreased from “1000 million per day to less than 3 per million”(What pushed Israel out of herd immunity? Modeling Covid-19 Spread of Delta and Waning Immunity). Unfortunately, these early signs of optimism were misplaced, and it clouded our judgement and took our eyes off the ball for the challenges that were about to come next.

Around the same time that the incidence of Covid was decreasing in first world countries like the US, Israel, and the UK, the situation was extremely dire in India. In India, the number of infections were significantly increasing, along with the number of hospitalizations and deaths. The cause was not known yet, at the time. However, in April 2021 in India, “56-65-year-olds were spending an average of 13 days in the hospital”(Covid-19 Mortality in the Delta Wave in India: A Hospital-Based Study from Ramanagara District, Karnataka). Additionally, “77-84.62% of individuals in hospitals were completely out of breath, and WBC count was significantly elevated in over 40% of cases”(Covid-19 Mortality in the Delta Wave in India: A Hospital-Based Study from Ramanagara District, Karnataka).  In other words, there were early indications that there was something going on in India that was causing the pathogenicity of Covid to increase, and a significant number of people to get Covid to become seriously ill. To some extent, it was even more than what was seen during the initial Covid wave in New York or during the 2020 winter Covid wave in the United States. This was corroborated by the number of individuals “…needing significant levels of Oxygen”(Covid-19 Mortality in the Delta Wave in India: A Hospital-Based Study from Ramanagara District, Karnataka). Perhaps the largest red flag and warning sign in this situation should have been the fact that most of the population in India had already been infected, and supposedly developed immunity. According to some studies, “55% of India’s population may have been infected by January 2021″(India says it contains spread of COVID-19, no new cases in fifth of country). This only further proves that a new, pathogenic variant that was clearly immune-evasive, and especially adept at penetrating immunity induced by natural infection had arisen and would prove a significant threat to the United States, where so many people had still not been vaccinated. Indeed, the story of what happened in India repeated almost exactly in the United States 2-3 months later.

So, America experienced the catastrophic effects of the Delta variant surge and then believed that everything was over. Surely there was enough immunity in America, so everything would be okay now, right? Unfortunately, the virus was still not done with us. Not only did our cases end up at a higher baseline than they were prior to the Delta surge. However, we then had a new variant arise in South Africa, which was good at evading all the immunity obtained from the Delta Variant, and previous variants. Specifically, “The reinfection rate of individuals who had been infected by other variants was up to 56% according to studies done by Qatar”(Protection against the Omicron Variant from Previous SARS-CoV-2 Infection). On the bright side, there were some positives on the horizon, though. The variant seemed to induce clinically milder symptoms and may have carried a lower risk of Long Covid. The variant also seemed to confer stronger protection to previous variants, suggesting that it was favored to be the dominant variant. For instance, studies showed that after having the Delta Variant, “Many individuals had a 6-fold increase in neutralization ability/capacity”(Omicron infection enhances Delta antibody immunity in vaccinated persons). This was unique to the Omicron variant, as other variants did not appear to provide such a broad immune response, especially to variants that were so dissimilar to it. This raised the hope that Omicron could signal a start to a more stable state with Covid because Omicron would be able to block reinfection, and infection, even if Covid experienced a significant number of mutations. Plus, the lower pathogenicity of Omicron would give it a survival advantage across populations, given that it would be less likely to kill its hosts. All that being said, while this prediction turned out to be somewhat true and the pandemic has remained stable after that point, with deaths and hospitalizations staying relatively stable in the US (albeit at a high level), and all subvariants being offshoots of Omicron, the 2021 winter Omicron wave caused a high rate of hospitalizations, deaths, and cases, even if it induced immunity in the process. 

So you might be wondering, what exactly was the point of going down memory lane with Covid? What was the point of discussing all these events? What I hope that you gleamed from this article is that while the Covid-19 Pandemic had an end of sorts, and while we appear to be out of the unstable, uncertain phase of the Pandemic now, America’s response fell quite short in many ways. Any future Pandemics could be made worse, and if we do not focus on how to significantly improve our response, the level of suffering that we undergo then could be made way worse. For one, we needed to be way more proactive, not reactive. We needed to stop hoping that Covid would end by itself, and we needed to actually take the steps to end it. We needed to tightly restrict travel from other countries and put a lot of security measures in place to prevent variants from coming to our country. Similarly, we needed to distribute the vaccine much more equitably and put a much more all hands-on deck effort in getting the world vaccinated by early 2022. It would not have been easy, but it could have been done. Additionally, we needed to keep slight restrictions in place until the world was vaccinated, like having a Federal Mask Mandate to keep cases as low as possible, while vaccinating the world. Finally, with the level of genomic analysis that we have available in today’s day and age, we should have worked on predicting worst case mutations that Covid-19 could undergo and created backup vaccine formulas based on those mutations to have immediately ready the second that we heard of these new variants. All of that would have minimized the level of hospitalizations, deaths, and disruption that society had to undergo throughout this pandemic. So, if nothing else, I hope you as a reader takeaway one point from this article: We needed to do way better in our response, and we are lucky that this was not way worse than it already was!

Sources:

Lubell, Maayan. “Israeli Studies Find Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Reduces Transmission.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 19 Feb. 2021, www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-israel-vaccine-int/israeli-studies-find-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-reduces-transmission-idUSKBN2AJ08J/.

De-Leon, Hilla, and Dvir Aran. “What pushed Israel out of herd immunity? modeling covid-19 spread of Delta and waning immunity.” medRxiv, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.12.21263451.

What is matcha? 

Matcha is high-grade green tea grounded into powdered form. It comes from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant.

Compared to other teas, matcha is a little quirky, due to the fact that it is shade grown, then steamed or stone ground.

Shade grown means that it is made from shade-grown tea leaves where tea bushes are proteced from sun and light is filtered in a controlled manor. Shading boosts chlorophyll production, which gives the leaves a richer green color. The lack of sun reduces the plant’s photosynthesis of the leaves, which alters the naturally occurring levels of caffeine, flavanols, sugars, antioxidants, and theanine.

The leaves are then treated with steam heat within to halt the oxidation process and bring out the color even more. Doing this creates a unique flavor profile of sweet and vegetal.

Matcha can also be stone ground; this is when the leaves are laid flat to dry and become tencha (leaves from which matcha is made). The tencha leaves are stripped of their stems and venins with the remaining ground in slow-turning mills to yield a smooth green tea powder.

How do you make matcha?

To make a delicious matcha drink, whisk the powder into hot water to form a frothy drink. Whisking promotes aeration, allowing the matcha powder and water to mix with air to give it a thick head of foam on top. The matcha can be a tea, latte, or even a smoothie!

Does matcha have caffeine?

Yes, matcha does have cafeeine! It has less caffeine than brewed coffee, but more than green tea. The tea leaves retain more of their caffeine content. Consuming matcha means you’re consuming the ground tea leaf, which means you’re ingesting more caffeine content than youw ould from the extraction of tea leaves.

What’s the difference between Green Tea and Matcha?

Green tea uses brewed tea leaves with a light, grassy flavor. Matcha, on the other hand, is the pulverized version of green tea leaves. It has a stronger concentration of some key nutrients and antioxidants.

References

• https://www.teatulia.com/tea-varieties-101/what-is-matcha.html 
• https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/matcha-vs-green-tea#summary
• https://www.sugimotousa.com/blog/how-to-whisk-matcha#:~:text=to%20Enjoy%20Matcha-,Why%20Whisk%20Matcha%3F,head%20of%20foam%20on%20top.

Now that we have developed a fundamental understanding of how different counting systems, especially binary, work, we can begin to understand the optimal solution to the Towers of Hanoi.

One by One 

Because binary digits are restricted to just one of two values, counting in binary has a particularly interesting rhythm. Understanding this rhythm is crucial in solving the Towers of Hanoi problem. This online binary counter is particularly useful in visualizing this rhythm. Beginning from zero, continue to count up, adding one with each step. Keep track of the index of the value that switches to a 1 at each step:

0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 3, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 4, …

Solution to the Towers of Hanoi

Interestingly enough, the most optimal solution to the Towers of Hanoi comes from following this rhythm exactly. To tie the two together, first assign numeric indices to the disks: 0 is the smallest, 1 the next smallest, and so on. Then, simply follow the pattern, at each step moving the disk whose index matches the next number in the sequence.

For example, consider the 3 disk problem:

• 0: move disk 0 to the right peg
• 1: move disk 1 to the middle peg
• 0: move disk 0 to the middle peg
• 2: move disk 2 to the right peg
• 0: move disk 0 to the left peg
• 1: move disk 1 to the right peg
• 0: move disk 0 to the right peg

And then we are done! There are some beautiful symmetries to this pattern. Also interesting is the fact that, for a setup with n disks, the optimal solution requires exactly 2^n – 1 moves.

Why Does This Work?

In so few words: recursion! Both the rhythm of binary counting and the problem of the Towers of Hanoi are self-similar problems. The idea of self-similarity ties directly into recursion: the full process, whether that’s counting up to a certain number or solving a problem with a certain number of disks, involves completing a smaller version of the process.

In the Towers of Hanoi, consider again the 3 disk problem. If we were somehow able to move the stack of the 2 smallest disks as a single unit, then the problem would reduce to three steps:

1. Move the 2-disk unit off of the third disk
2. Move the third desk to the right peg
3. More the 2-disk unit onto the third disk

So, through a recursive approach, the problem becomes much simpler to solve.

In the process of binary counting, return to the counter visualizer. Count up to the number 7 (111 in binary). Notice that we count up to the number 3 (11 in binary), roll over to 4 (100 in binary), and then count up three more to get to 7 (111). This exactly mirrors the recursive pattern in the Towers of Hanoi!

Conclusion

Oftentimes in mathematics, and in problem solving in general, finding an inventive way to connect and reduce one problem to another can make understanding optimal solutions much easier. The Towers of Hanoi, though it may appear as a confusing game at first, cleanly works in parallel to just counting up by one in binary. 

References

1. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/algorithms/towers-of-hanoi/a/towers-of-hanoi
2. https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/towerofhanoi.html
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SUvWfNJSsM