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Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

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Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#31

Story time: My daughters day care has 2 fulltime employees and a part timer. The fulltime staff are vaxxed, the part-time person isn't, despite having been eligible for a loooooong time. Well, guess who got an asymptomatic covid infection, and then went on to spread it to her entire family, including her infant granddaughter. Luckily, the person who infected her got tested and let her know in time for her to not infe…

Those shaming others into participating in a clinical trial are naive at best and evil at worst.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#32
I'm genuinely shocked at how many of my colleagues are in the anti-vaxx club.

Literally half of my team have said they will not get the vaccine when it's available to them. One citing a podcast which talked about how the vaccine causes programmed cell death and the other because "it's all a bit suspicious".

Great guys, intelligent and generally good to be around. I didn't know how to react when I found out.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world has always seemed far ruder & far more off-base. In every circumstance. Linus isn't always a good role model for how to behave, but it is enormously relieving sometimes, in a world that feels batshit insane, to hear someone else processing-out-loud their strong reactions.

Most people prefer to be lied to by someone pleasant than have their stupidity accurately and bluntly laid bare. That's the short of it. I've never seen a Linus rant be a personal attack. Every time, he's pointing out that someone who ought to know better is being dangerously stupid to the detriment of a great many others. Some people take offence at this -- even if they're not the target of Linus' ire -- because the…

Honest and direct feedback is one thing, belittling people for not fully understanding an edge case can be counterproductive. Linus is also not immune to mistakes, and he admits to having a general lack of understanding of the emotions of others.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#35
post #24

Unpopular opinion: watching people struggle and fail or just plain refuse to engage with covid (wear a mask, socially distance, get a vaccine) has really shaken my faith in democracy. I was worried after Trumps election in 2016. But it's not a one-off phenomenon. People just behave randomly, they don't calculate risk, they don't care about facts, they're not even able to be self interested as far as I can tell. Just…

I'd love to know how the rest of the world experienced the anti-societal refuseniks of Covid. In America, we've had their ticket for a long time, a persistent extremely vocal segment of society that refuses to get along, that always has very important opinions on other people's business & how to do things, that seems to have created their own social strata on being anti-societal, anti-cooperative, generally just anti…

There's a great quote from some movie that's stuck in my mind. I'm paraphrasing slightly, because my memory is fuzzy, but it goes something like: "Wow, it's so wonderful to see how you've all expressed your unique individuality by dressing exactly alike."

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#36

I still don't like how rude Linus is. I'll never like how rude Linus is. But his explanation of mRNA is nicely done. Hope somebody reading it learns something and realizes they've been lied to. Maybe even gets vaccinated. That'd be worth a mean email or two.

It's not always appropriate, but sometimes a verbal kick in the ass is useful. Shame is a powerful motivator. Shame used to keep the majority of racists and morons quiet in public, and slowly they were dying out since it was so hard to find their fellows. We need to make willful ignorance shameful again.

And when you're dealing with things that endanger lives, I have no room for politeness, myself.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#37

I still don't like how rude Linus is. I'll never like how rude Linus is. But his explanation of mRNA is nicely done. Hope somebody reading it learns something and realizes they've been lied to. Maybe even gets vaccinated. That'd be worth a mean email or two.

To be fair he started with the word "please".

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#38

Story time: My daughters day care has 2 fulltime employees and a part timer. The fulltime staff are vaxxed, the part-time person isn't, despite having been eligible for a loooooong time. Well, guess who got an asymptomatic covid infection, and then went on to spread it to her entire family, including her infant granddaughter. Luckily, the person who infected her got tested and let her know in time for her to not infe…

I have a 9mo old in day care. Day care keeps these kids constantly sick regardless of C19 - I just spent two nights on Memorial Day weekend in the hospital with my son due to RSV. Anyways, out of curiosity how did C19 end up effecting the infant? I [was] an LEO and my wife is a health care professional so we have both been vaccinated since the beginning of the year, but I still think about my son with everything starting to go back to normal here in the Midwest.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Get vaccinated. Stop believing the anti-vax lies

#39

Unpopular opinion: watching people struggle and fail or just plain refuse to engage with covid (wear a mask, socially distance, get a vaccine) has really shaken my faith in democracy. I was worried after Trumps election in 2016. But it's not a one-off phenomenon. People just behave randomly, they don't calculate risk, they don't care about facts, they're not even able to be self interested as far as I can tell. Just…

I agree 100% and it's quite scary.

We've moved past the "information age" where facts and science and raw data are used to drive decisions, and we're in some kind of "selfish wants" age.

I don't know if it's a problem with democracy though - we've known for a long time now if you let regular folk vote on it a huge number would vote for absolutely zero tax and society would fall apart because of it, but they'd go down chanting how free they are because they're not paying tax.

I wonder if it's a lack of education about critical thinking, or maybe just a few decades of being told we can have whatever we want, making (most/some) people very entitled and self-centred.

I'm locked in a quarantine hotel for 14 days right now (entering Australia) and I'm live vlogging it across social media. I'm getting a TON of comments from people who are outraged that this is a violation of my rights, etc. etc. It doesn't occur to them that I had to agree to this quarantine long before I could even book a plane ticket, and I personally think it's a very good protective measure and I'm happy about it. Their outrage about what is happening to me is apparently more relevant and important than my own thoughts about what is happening to me.

People seem to think their own personal rights are more important than the rights of society as a whole.

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