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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

#51

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.

No matter how much education anyone has, humans are still humans. We all make more decisions based on gut and what we want the truth to be than through logic.

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

#52
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you wear a seatbelt in the car?

Yes but no because it is the law. It should be law that car companies provide a seat-belt but not that I wear one. Your one sentence straw-man wont suffice here. Again, it's all about personal risk. I could go climb a cliff face with a rope or I could do it without. I don't need GOVT to tell me not to do the latter.

Did you know that seatbelts save lives besides those of the people wearing them? That in even minor collisions being untethered to a seat can injure others?

The justification for mandatory seatbelt laws is the same as the justification for covid mitigations: you’re protecting more than yourself.

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

#53
post #43

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.

Well, I'm afraid I have to disagree that I'm not at all shocked about this level of ignorance brewing within the tech community. These people are very susceptible to snake oil health claims about things like nutrition, "nootropics" and the faux medicine of infinite dilution. So why wouldn't they also be susceptible to misinformation about real biotechnology?

Computer scientists are phenomenal at understanding human-created systems. They are remarkably worse at understanding non-human created systems, from what I can tell (as a structural biologist). "Tech" (whatever that nebulous word means - basically the people lampooned in 'Silicon Valley) are perhaps one of the most gullible groups of people ever, maybe because they are so focused on a combination disruption (thinking outside the box) and marketing.

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

#54

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.

99.97% survival rate for our demographic. When we can sue should we suffer an adverse reaction, then the cost-benefit analysis may even out. Right now, it’s all but downside.

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

#55

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.

> Great guys, intelligent and generally good to be around.

"Great" and "intelligent" only to the extent that you have actually tested their civic maturity and intelligence, you mean. Democracy is in trouble because education has become a narrowing of the understanding, not an expansion of reason and civic principles.

Meanwhile, the pandemic of ignorance is a lucrative resource for ludicrous discourse.

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

#56

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…

You've got doctors , presumably educated people who actually learned how DNA, RNA, works, telling lawmakers that vaccines cause people to be interfaced with 5G towers, like what, an X-Men techno-virus? I mean WTF, how can professionals be so INSANE? And it's not just this person, there are lots of QAnon idiots spreading this mindvirus all over the net. https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/cleveland-doctor-tells-ohi...

Doctors are just as capable of being idiots as anyone else.

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

#57
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you wear a seatbelt in the car?

Yes but no because it is the law. It should be law that car companies provide a seat-belt but not that I wear one. Your one sentence straw-man wont suffice here. Again, it's all about personal risk. I could go climb a cliff face with a rope or I could do it without. I don't need GOVT to tell me not to do the latter.

You are assuming that your injuries in a crash w/o a seatbelt would only affect you, if you chose not to wear a seatbelt.

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

#58

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.

Maybe the fact that they break the stereotype tells you more about the flaws in your worldview than theirs. They're smart and great people, maybe they're on to something, or at the very least, their decision on this particular issue isn't really that big of a deal.

I remember when anti-vax meant multi level marketing, crystal healing yuppies or home schooling ruby ridge bible thumpers refusing to get their kids the MMR shot. The definition has significantly relaxed, to the point where just saying "yeah I'm not really worried about this one, I don't think I want to do it" is anti-vax. Lots of people would like to continue making their own medical decisions using their own risk assessment.

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

#59
post #54

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.

99.97% survival rate for our demographic. When we can sue should we suffer an adverse reaction, then the cost-benefit analysis may even out. Right now, it’s all but downside.

Because you can still transmit it, this isn't hard, just read a little.

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

#60

But what if I don't want to? I'd call the idea that people's decision not to is predicated on an anti vax worldview similar in substance to a frivolous conspiracy theory.

I think you are conflating a person and people.

In this case, Linus is responding specifically to Enrico Weigelt, who is making the claim that the COVID vaccines are a "generic human experiment that basically creates a new humanoid race (people who generate and exhaust the toxic spike proteine, whose gene sequence doesn't look quote natural)."

Linus' email is directed wholly towards Enrico.

If you don't want to, then you don't want to. I understand that not everyone will want to. My work understands that, as does the hospital near work, and both have contingency plans for when someone who works there does not want to get vaccinated (and no, it's not "fire them").

Enrico didn't say "I don't want to", he effectively said "I don't want to, and here's why…" and then put forward a reason that Linux (and I, and I imagine many others) believe wholeheartedly to be untrue.

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