It's been over a year of us living in a global pandemic.

If you are showing up to an interview for a job that requires a little applied mathematics, the least you could do is be ready with the equation to go from R to the infection growth rate and the Laplace Transform.

It's hardly an original question. It's hardly difficult. And it's hardly esoteric.

It's straight forward undergrad level PDE problem. I don't expect you add fancy social variables there. Just get the basic equation.

R = e^(λT).

That's all.

It's very difficult to judge people in a remote working environment. At least for me. Because I usually depend on a lot of white boarding.

In the absence of that, standard problems are an interviewer's crutch. Use that and ace interviews, young people.