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Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

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Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#111

Post by chipotle_coyote »

panny wrote: post #40
lalaland1125 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did he say that you would consider to be wrong or unverified?

I'll bite. He says it's crazy conspiracy theories. I have family hospitalized with blood clots after receiving the vax. She's out now, but that hospitalization will lead to a personal bankruptcy. It's not crazy conspiracy theory when your own family starts seeing negative effects. After watching what happened to her, nobody else in my family has any desire to get vaxxed. Nobody in my family is "anti-vax" as we've all…

I’m sorry your family member had this serious but exceedingly rare reaction to the vaccine, but here’s the thing: when, exactly, do you propose making the call to go ahead and get your family vaccinated? When vaccines are provably 100% safe? Probably not. So how about five nines, 99.999% safe? Well, no, apparently that’s not good enough for you, because that’s roughly what we’ve got. When it comes to fatal reactions to the vaccines, it’s past six nines. And of course, that still means that out of 330 million Americans, we could expect 33 to die from the vaccine! That’s dozens!

Compared to over a half a million dead and still counting from Covid-19.

Again, it sucks that serious, life-threatening side effects from the vaccine are possible, and sucks more than you’ve been personally touched by them. But the chances are still literally orders of magnitude greater that you will suffer serious, life-threatening side effects if you get Covid-19. Including blood clots. More people have been hospitalized by or even died from blood clots caused by Covid than they have from the blood clots caused by the vaccines. By a lot.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#114

Post by CompMan411 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #57
macksd wrote: post #15

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 immun…

9 out of 10 times when someone claims people have been dogmatically unwilling to consider ideas that run counter to scientific establishment, those people were just responding to profoundly insane anti-science ideas (earth is flat, covid is fake,global warming is just the sun etc). Their responses may seem glib, because they don't feel the ideas are deserving of serious discussion, but usually they understand things…

Let’s not forget microchip tracking and Jewish globalist overlords.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#115

Post by jeffreyrogers »

There are a range of anti-vaccine opinions from idiotic (the example Linus quotes) to more reasonable. The way this issue has been handled is emblematic of the way many such political issues are handled: fringe views are promoted and "debunked" while more reasonable views that go against mainstream narratives are ignored. This is amplified by various high profile personalities in the media who shape the views people are presented with, so that all critics of the mainstream narrative appear to be lunatics. Thus stigmatizing anyone who has a more reasonable objection. This is not a new phenomenon but has played out much more frequently over the last year or so.

Also, I got the vaccine, so if you interpret this as some sort of veiled anti-vaccine comment you are part of the problem.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#116

Post by mnouquet »

pciexpgpu wrote: post #18

This is good. Now states are combating such hesitancy by drawing lottery for vaccinated folks. Like, having this magic, absolutely mind boggling potion that prevents serious illness and death *isn't* already the lottery win of our lifetime?? People in India and elsewhere are dying because of lack of vaccines and here we have educated, first world countries struggle to get their citizens vaccinated. Unfortunately sham…

> prevents serious illness and death

Only in 60+ patients with co-morbidity.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#117

Post by chris_wot »

IvyMike wrote: post #50
macksd wrote: post #15

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 immun…

There are a LOT of anti-vaxxers who disingenuously couch their advocacy as "I'm only asking questions". It's no surprise when you've seen a 10:1 ratio of bad actors to good (or worse), one might get a little exasperated. In any case, I've recently been reading Lauren Sompayrac's "How the Immune System Works", and it's a technical overview of the immune system. It's not going to make you into a full blown immunologist…

Is that a book?

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#118

Post by tptacek »

azinman2 wrote: post #92
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little bit like asking a random software engineer on the street on how GPU drivers work internally: they're unlikely to have an actual informed opinion.

But compared to someone who isn't in CS, they'd at least understand that GPUs exist, might be able to speculate on what's needed, and have an idea of who to even ask. I don't work on operating systems but I had a CS education, so I know enough about the kinds of things it needs to worry about that I could answer about the building blocks of a kernel in a way that I feel would be largely correct.

I think the quality of the speculation you'd get from a random software developer on the design of GPU drivers is, in fact, probably a good model for the quality of vaccinology speculation you'd get from a random anesthesiologist.

But a neat thing about HN is that there are people here who've been to med school and can presumably chime in.

What I can tell you personally is that vaccinology seems to involve a lot of centrifuging of rabbit poop, which is something I don't think they do a lot of in med school.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#119

Post by newsbinator »

IvyMike wrote: post #50
macksd wrote: post #15

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 immun…

There are a LOT of anti-vaxxers who disingenuously couch their advocacy as "I'm only asking questions". It's no surprise when you've seen a 10:1 ratio of bad actors to good (or worse), one might get a little exasperated. In any case, I've recently been reading Lauren Sompayrac's "How the Immune System Works", and it's a technical overview of the immune system. It's not going to make you into a full blown immunologist…

That's fine- whether or not their question is disingenuous, it's almost always a reasonable question that has been asked and answered by researchers, or that has been asked and not been able to be answered (e.g. what are the long term effects of mRNA vaccines?).

It's perfectly fine to say, "we don't know what are the long term effects of mRNA vaccines but we can guess they're unlikely to be worse than the long term effects of the thing they're vaccinating against, which you're almost certain to catch sooner or later".

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#120

Post by outworlder »

losvedir wrote: post #55

I'm vaccinated but I think it's hindsight bias to say the mRNA vaccines are obviously safe. We had to wait for clinical trials to show that. There has been a great deal of research and development on the delivery of the mRNA, what kind of molecule to wrap it in, for example. Additionally, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but with e.g. the Spanish Flu, the morbidity was not from the flu, per se, but the immune res…

> If that's the case, could the proteins coded by the mRNA potentially have kicked off such a response?

Why would they?

And more specifically, why would they cause lung issues? Because that's the main problem with COVID. The virus like to bind to cells that have a specific receptors, with the vast majority contained in lung tissue.

You would expect to see major damage near the injection site if your cytokine storm theory had weight, but not much else.

If there is a mechanism that will cause side effects on mRNA vaccines, then such mechanism will also be presented in the virus. Except it's a localized, self-limited amount, as mRNA cannot replicate. Viruses can.

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