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Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

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Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#301

Post by [deleted] »

blfr wrote: post #214
stavros wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people who are in the ICU because they refuse to get vaccinated are costing the taxpayer a shitload of money. I'd be all for "you can stay unvaccinated if you like, but you won't get an ICU bed if you get severe COVID", but that's a heavier hand than a passport.

That's ridiculous. We don't expect people to get flu vaccines before extending medical care. We don't even expect basic sexual hygiene and extend extremely expensive HIV treatments to people who have tempted fate much, much more seriously than skipping a vaccince.

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#302

Post by AnimalMuppet »

throwawaysea wrote: post #74

> The half-life of mRNA is a few hours. Any injected mRNA will be all gone from your body in a day or two. Can someone with more knowledge comment on whether this is true for components of the vaccine that aren't just the mRNA bits? I am not sure, but I assume there are various other components that form the delivery vehicle for the vaccine, stabilize it for storage, and so on. What are the actual mechanisms for thos…

I think that's kind of irrelevant, since those bits aren't the part that were causing concern. Nobody's worried that the part that stabilizes it for storage is going to "create a new humanoid race". That's purely based on (a misunderstanding of) the mRNA.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#303

Post by ceejayoz »

lethologica wrote: post #109
ceejayoz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think that, but there’s basically nothing in nursing or anesthesia training that’s gonna deal much with the nitty gritty details of vaccines and how they’re developed and tested. It’s like asking a car mechanic about steel production. Entirely out of their wheelhouse, even if they deal with the steel daily. (Both could comfortably tell you masks don’t cause hypoxia or pneumonia, though.)

It’s a starting point though. How often do you get to your answers immediately without having to go through some dead ends and wrong turns? That’s how learning works.

> It’s a starting point though.

The point is that the nurse and the car mechanic are at about the same starting point on the subject.

Being willing to learn is great, but they have minimal extant knowledge from their profession.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#304

Post by neither_color »

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…

>Unfortunately shaming such people will only push them further into antivax territory.

Funny that you say that, I had the same thought when buying groceries last week. The cashier started telling me she'll never get it because it's being mandated to cull us and there's some secret database of deaths yada yada yada. Mind you I didn't ask. I felt sorry for her, even worried. She's a kind enough middle aged lady, she's been at the same grocery store for years. Somehow she's convinced that she's privy to some super secret knowledge only to be disclosed to a chosen few. It's like a nigerian email scam or Q thing.

I was a little worried because she could've gotten herself fired for talking like that to the wrong person who would get mad and tell the manager. I just smiled, nodded, spoke in a low tone and said "I used to think so too but THEY want us to think that way because it weakens America if people here keep getting covid while they're over it and starting to beat us economically. Our vaccine works the best so they're spreading propaganda to scare us from getting it" I have no idea if it helped but she at least seemed intrigued that I didn't roll my eyes or scold her.

People who get suckered into this stuff are in some imaginary role-play where they're the hero of the story, this article explains it. https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analy...

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#305

Post by adventured »

walrus01 wrote: post #222
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the thousand unfalsifiable “troll” accusations. There is no way to differentiate a troll from either a fool, an extremist, or simply one who happens to not share the opinion of the reader.

This presumes that anyone on the Internet owes a troll their time and effort to discern between a fool, an extremist, a shitposter, a troll or a misguided but earnest individual who shares a genuinely held but scientifically false opinion.

It doesn't presume that.

There is more at stake in public debates than just the back and forth between troll/skeptic/questioner and someone responding to them.

If you benefit from such a good idea as vaccines and the rather obscenely massive benefit they have delivered to humanity, you have a moral obligation to step up and - even if rarely - throw down in a debate in their favor, when presented with such a tremendous opportunity. It requires the tiniest of efforts compared to the scientists that manage to give us these vaccines across decades of their efforts. Which also doesn't mean a person can't be lazy and free-ride on everyone else that is putting in some group effort to intellectually defend vaccines, of course. There are always free-riders.

The public skeptics and trolls are doing everyone a favor. They're being public about it. They're providing an intellectual and social opportunity that should be taken advantage of, eagerly. It's wonderful that they exist. They provide an opportunity to educate/inform, not specifically the troll or skeptic, rather, everyone else that is reading along. There is no avoiding the consequences of public debate on such important ideas, there is only to engage or give ground to the other side.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#306

Post by [deleted] »

MikeKusold wrote: post #161
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…

They are not "obviously safe". The mRNA vaccines just had an article today that exposed a link to heart inflammation. The AstraZeneca vaccine also has some side effects that didn't show up in their abbreviated trials. I understand why someone would be hesitant to get a vaccine that only has Emergency Use Authorization. That said, I personally believe that the benefits outweigh the potential side-effects. If I weren't…

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#307

Post by theiafan »

young_unixer wrote: post #263
krastanov wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been accused of it in another context, so I sympathize with your frustration, but this concept is not bullshit. It is important that we have a taxonomy of fallacies and troll tactics because that makes it easier to detect them. Regrettably, it also makes it trivial for bad-faith actors to just accuse everyone they dislike of some named troll tactic. The cure is not to stop using names for bad behaviors. Rather…

Even if you know for certain that someone is an anti-vaxxer, disregarding their opinion/question by accusing them of sealioning is a fallacy. Someone is not a "bad-faith" actor for asking precisely the questions that are hard to answer, even if they're using those questions to support a wrong idea. If you don't have time to answer their questions, don't answer them. If you do have time, you have a good opportunity to…

> Even if you know for certain that someone is an anti-vaxxer, disregarding their opinion/question by accusing them of sealioning is a fallacy.

1. Labeling someone a "sealion" doesn't even hinge on their opinion. You seem to have missed the entire concept, and instead interpreted it as a generic dismissive.

2. Uh, you don't get to just call something a "fallacy" because you don't like it (though many others are doing the same thing in this thread).

Sealioning is a reference to the specific disingenuous process of spamming the same low-effort, low-brow, easily-answered questions in every last public forum. It's a basic disinformation technique to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#308

Post by Taniwha »

cblconfederate wrote: post #191

Even the term antivaxxer in this case is divisive and kind of presupposes that everyone should be a provaccer. Since we are not going for herd immunity, everyone should assees their own chances before making an informed decision, which in the vast majority of cases will be to vaccinate themselves. But there are specific sideeffects in specific groups that have been documented

I'm old enough that I had measles as a kid, my grandma had polio as a kid wore a leg brace her entire life, rubella and the associated birth defects were a thing in the community - when I was a kid EVERYONE was a pro-vaxxer, they were the medical miracle that were changing people's lives - IMHO the main reason we have antivaxxers today is because we haven't been telling these family stories to our kids

Why not go for herd immunity? maybe we should be releasing (suitably tested) live vaccines

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#309

Post by H8crilA »

Rochus wrote: post #247
H8crilA wrote: post #140

Just to clear one thing: Vaccines actually do edit the genetic code, but only of some select B-cells. And so does any other antigen that your body develops antibodies for. The process is very complicated and beautiful, and is pretty much exactly the same as in plenty of other multicellular life forms. If you've ever wondered what's the "storage format" for all the recipes for all the different antibodies that your bo…

> The process is very complicated and beautiful And all the molecular machinery in our body is much more complex than any software system.

It had a bit more time to develop :)

But, I don't think some software systems are far off, particularly if you are a bit more permissive with the boundaries of a "system". I don't know really how to compare such apples to oranges, but the genetic material of a human is just a single gigabyte. Now i know that a gigabyte C++ program is not on par with a gigabyte of DNA, but a terabyte of code? Maybe? We're definitely at the terabytes of code range if you look at the internet as a whole. You can also add the deep ML models, they're easily in the gigabyte ranges.

Of course the complexity in the protein-based lifeform comes from the massive parallelism of the code execution (every single cell and every single ribosome!) and the massive amount of noise that the environment constantly throws at the lifeforms. Compare with the nearly pristine conditions that the sets of customized silicone crystals that we call computers operate in.

Give me volatility and time, and you'll be stunned, eventually. Let's see what's next in this book :)

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#310

Post by IvyMike »

GPerson wrote: post #272
IvyMike wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m having a hard time believing you’ve met worse than a 10:1 ratio, with respect to interest in vaccines, of “bad actors” to “good actors”. Here are some links to polls about American views on vaccines. It seems unlikely you’re running into this ratio without some major biasing factor. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/02/09/he... https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/03/05/growing-share... (I’l…

There is a major biasing factor; it's trivial to ask a question like "Have you looked at the data in VAERS that shows tens of thousands of adverse vaccine reactions??" It's not so trivial to answer the question in a way that explains how VAERS works, and why this conclusion is incorrect. This is the same with many possible questions.

This specific scenario happens on my local Nextdoor groups all the time. I've answered responded with what I think is pretty clear and concise information, and then seem that same person ask the same question the very next day in a new thread. (And the next day, and the next...) I cannot help but conclude they're not really looking for an answer.

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