Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#411

Post by panny » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 1:48 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #111

panny wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>exceedingly rare reaction

In my personal case, it's 1 in 8 vaxxed that I know personally with bad reaction and accompanying devastating financial consequences.

I also don't really consider the reported thousands dead, tens of thousands of ER visits, and thousands more hospitalized and/or permanently disabled as exceedingly rare. These are CDC numbers from the VAERS database,

https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?TABLE=ON&GRO...

>when, exactly, do you propose making the call to go ahead and get your family vaccinated?

When it is proven safe.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#412

Post by ShroudedNight » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #275

adventured wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is bullshit. It helps to create an atmosphere where you can't ask questions or debate. I'm entirely pro-vaccines. However, I'm simultaneously entirely in favor of people asking questions, no matter what their intentions are. Their intentions do not matter. You either know your stuff or you do not. It's always better to draw out the eg anti-vaccine types. If something is defensible, then don't be a coward about it,…

I don't know what your experience has been, but I would wager good money that nearly every anti-vaccine person I have encountered has nearly zero capacity to have their opinion changed by properly formatted scientific evidence and experts presented in a rational, logical way. They are firmly set in their bubble of conspiracy theory rhetoric. You could literally bring an expert panel of eight virologists and epidemiol…

The only (limited) success I've had moving emotionally-held models of belief is specifically exploring what signals would be present if the competing models were incorrect. By focusing on falsifiability and reconciling it with reality, I've _sometimes_ managed to have my counter-party downgrade their argument from scientific surety to human behavioural expections in some key ambiguous situation.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#413

Post by mmmqaq » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

phroobster wrote: post #408

I’ve already been diagnosed with covid and it was fine, a little worse than an average cold. Why should I take a vaccine and risk side effects for a disease with a 99.9% survival rate, when I’m not even bothered by it? Doesn’t make sense to me.

You are the lucky person who only has a little symptom. The vaccine is for stopping the transmission so that the unlucky people won't get and die from COVID. Then the economy and the world can go back to normal.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#414

Post by fomine3 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #204

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…

Some class of vaccine hesitancy boils down to miscalculating expected value. The expected value of getting a vaccine is very high, but people choose not to anyway, presumably due to misinformation or miscalculation. Lotteries here are exploiting miscalculations of expected value to incentivize behavior (0.1% of saving my life? phaw, but $100 expected value?!). It feels a bit like patching a security bug with its own…

I like how behavioral economics works for vaccination.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#415

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

azangru wrote: post #268

Ok, while Linus so righteously describes the basic molecular biology of RNA, here are some of the less insane questions that he doesn't address: 1) After an injection of mRNA (inside of lipid nanoparticles, if I understand correctly) into the body, which cells will the mRNA enter? 2) The mRNA will cause the synthesis of the spike protein that will be displayed on the surface of these cells and initiate the immune res…

I can’t answer all your questions, but for the 5th: the spike protein is most definitely cytotoxic and my guess is that they are not at all attached to the membrane (as nor is covid particles remain attached), effectively solving 1 and 2 of your questions. As for the cytotoxicity, they are made in a locally high but overall very low level compared to even a mild Covid case, so the effects of that should be less than what covid would have been. About 4 I read that basically every foreign protein in the blood stream can potentially start platelet aggregation, so there is that.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#416

Post by mmmqaq » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

phroobster wrote: post #408

I’ve already been diagnosed with covid and it was fine, a little worse than an average cold. Why should I take a vaccine and risk side effects for a disease with a 99.9% survival rate, when I’m not even bothered by it? Doesn’t make sense to me.

The probablity of survival from taking the vaccine more than 99.9%, so the benifits of vaccine is larger than the risk.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#417

Post by kaba0 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

ghoward wrote: post #404

kaba0 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am pro science, but science doesn't claim that all vaccines are safe Indeed. But science does claim that Pfizer, Moderna, etc COVID-vaccines are safe and you are un-scientific if you claim otherwise. They went through proper trials, and were accepted independently* by many countries. * not completely independently I’m sure, but my point is that even if you don’t trust your country at all, several other ones decid…

How can science claim they are safe when we haven't even had the chance to do tests for long-term effects yet?

The vaccine’s matter is in your body for a day at most. The immune system is known for quite some time, and the immunization do happen. In what way could someone develop a side effect long after the vaccine? Of course medicine is data based, not necessarily about mechanisms, but at a point Occam’s razor has to apply. And either way, we would have seen by now any side effect since it has been injected into many millions for quite some time now.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#418

Post by fomine3 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #79

dvt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thank you, Linus for standing up to the wealth of misinformation out there and holding his ground. Being a pompous ass might feel good, especially when you think you are (or you actually are) smarter than your opponent, but it won't sway anyone. In fact, it does quite the opposite. If you're seriously trying to convince someone they're wrong, you need to be kind, be patient, and have a calm, productive discussion -…

Linus is not in the wrong here. You have an anti-vax spouting BS on the Linux Kernel dev list of all places. It's absolutely not the right venue for that. He could have just expelled the idiot from the list. He chose not to do that. Some people will listen to (perceived) authority. Linus has a large following. It's fair to say that a non-zero number of individuals may be persuaded by his strong stance. I doubt the pe…

Anti-vax on LKML... I wish it's just dislike about DEC VAX.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#419

Post by mahogany » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

dvt wrote: post #291

tux3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Social IQ isn't really HN's forte. Rude and uncalled for, even after your edit. Patient discussion is ineffective on people who are acting in bad faith. It is counterproductive. There is no debate to be had. No one is genuinely trying to learn anything here. By giving con artists and dangerous vaccine conspiracies a space, you legitimize their line of questionning. LKML is not a place to send anti-vax emails or to…

> Rude and uncalled for, even after your edit. I was just correcting the term in the edit, but I agree I'm being a bit inflammatory. > Deplatforming works. No it doesn't. The entire history of Western Liberalism—since the Magna Carta onwards—teaches us that censorship is quite literally never the answer.

> No it doesn't. The entire history of Western Liberalism—since the Magna Carta onwards—teaches us that censorship is quite literally never the answer.

What do you mean by "works"? Deplatforming seems to work if it's goal is to simply limit the spread of a message. Whether or not that's good or bad is a separate question. Do you think Alex Jones has just as big of a viewership as when he was on Youtube? Are there just as many people who know what Trump was talking about last week, now that he's gone from Twitter? Big platforms give those with followings an opportunity to reach even more people.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#420

Post by dlp211 » Fri, Jun 11, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

ghoward wrote: post #402

dlp211 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that not all things can be known and when giving advice, you go with the best known data...which at times can be wrong. This is literally how science works. We don't always have the liberty to wait for a near certain answer. And the experts haven't been wrong for a year and a half, the experts were working with bad or incomplete data for a few months. Their advice for the past year, wear masks, socially…

Has their advice for the past year been correct? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27460858

If masks and social distancing didn't work, you need to have some idea of why the Flu had its mildest year ever. Also, countless people have demonstrated with pulseox meters that blood oxygen saturation is unaffected by mask wearing, so while those findings are interesting, you are far too quick to draw any type of conclusions that masks don't work and/or are harmful.