Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

Related discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27466344

It's because they are discussing the plans for their next in-person Linux conference and whether they should require vaccinations.

Absolutely agree with everything Linus says here. But I'm almost equally concerned that there's an awful lot of people on the pro-science bandwagon who don't actually support science, but simply don't tolerate dissent or questioning, and that's unscientific and potentially harmful too.

I scanned most of the Pfizer trial and was wondering why we expected the immunity after the vaccine to last longer than natural immunity. A typical infection can last for several weeks, so your immune system is presumably exposed to the virus for a similar period of time. And after a natural infection I hear 6 months being thrown around as a typical window of immunity. But I was hearing claims of vaccines lasting for years, when they were only in the trials for less than 6 months. Why is this?

Fortunately I know a lot of people in the medical field. I asked a nurse who had been in a COVID ICU ward since this began. No idea, he said. Good question. I asked a few others: same answer. I asked several anesthesiologist friends: they did more med-school after all. Mostly no idea. One suggested that the vaccine might be more targeted and get a more potent response, maybe?

I tried casting a wider net on Facebook, and got a few nastygrams about how I was spreading uneducated FUD. I asked if they knew the answer but I was told to listen to the experts and read the science, whatever that means to these people. One friend did send me a link to a quote by the Moderna CEO that implied they have machines that can count antibody concentrations and they tracked it over time - I had no idea about that, so that was cool.

Eventually someone referred me to their cousin in nursing school who referred me to their brother-in-law who is actually an epidemiologist, and he told me it was a good question and explained all sorts of things about the various types of cells involved in the immune response and how the vaccine delivery invokes a very specific response that is, as one of the doctors suspected, much more targeted at something less likely to change, and how those immune cell types produce longer-lasting immunity. Now I was satisfied and learned something.

But those people in the middle think of themselves as being pro-science but they're really not. And the more they engage with anti-vaxxers the more ammunition anti-vaxxers will think they have and the more they'll dig into their beliefs. It's not good.

Linus is the guy replying.

It's just an impression that things are different. Newsgroups couple of decades ago had just as much off-topic or purely trolly politics.