Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

lore.kernel.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 649 posts

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#461

Post by zaarn »

panny wrote: post #411
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/findfie…

From about the 200 people I've got on my spreadsheet to track this shit (because I'm not a very busy person and it's a nice way to counter antivaxxers), I've got 0 people who have been hospitalized. Most people simply suffer from a strong, but expected, side effect of a vaccine. After all, their immune system is indeed fighting off what it thinks is a serious threat and expending a lot of resources for that.

You get similar (but weaker) side effects from Influenza shots.

If you look at the write-ups on that link, btw, and not simply if the person was hospitalized, you see that most cases simply end up in observation overnight and most suffer rather mild symptoms you'd experience from a strong immune reaction. A lot of cases are marked as "not recovered" but the writeup says "Headache for 45 minutes, gave ibuprofen."

Even better, most of the deaths are labelled as an allergic reaction and in some cases it's 80+ year old people dying.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#462

Post by stavros »

tekknik wrote: post #443
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.

I’m pretty sure if I go to the ICU it’s my insurance company paying the bill. Also suddenly we care about how much tax revenue we spend?

In my country we do.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#463

Post by JBSay »

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…

Vaccines are not magic. Every treatment has potential downsides. That's why they need approval to weight the potential benefit/harm trade-off.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#464

Post by azinman2 »

symlinkk wrote: post #328
azinman2 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not true. They've been used for years with cancer at minimum.

Outside of clinical trials? Where did you see that?

You’re right as far as I can tell. I understood it to be released but it’s only in trial form.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#465

Post by ghoward »

rorykoehler wrote: post #449
ghoward wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people are far too quick to think that masks do work and/or are not harmful. What happened to the Precautionary Principle?

A mask isn’t going to hurt you if it doesn’t work. Honestly my 3 year old displays more logic in his thought than this. And before you say it no the virus won’t appear on the mask anymore more so than it would enter your mouth and lungs if the mask wasn’t on.

Does heightened levels of carbon dioxide hurt? Everything we know about heightened levels of carbon dioxide in buildings says, "Yes." Why would masks be any different?

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#466

Post by ghoward »

dlp211 wrote: post #437
ghoward wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people are far too quick to think that masks do work and/or are not harmful. What happened to the Precautionary Principle?

Sorry, the entire medical field exists as a counterpoint to the idea that masks are harmful.

The medical field uses masks in the environment they were made for. And they are changed regularly. In the non-medical world, people don't do that.

If people used masks properly, I wouldn't have much of an argument, but they don't, so I do.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#467

Post by chipotle_coyote »

panny wrote: post #411
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/findfie…

Well. "medalerts.org" is the "National Vaccine Information Center", a notorious source of vaccine misinformation, pushing the thoroughly discredited theory that vaccines cause autism, and lately -- surprise -- being widely criticized as one of the worst pushers of Covid-19 misinformation. A substantial amount of their funding comes from Joseph Mercola, which, well, yikes. (Why I say "yikes" is left as an exercise for the reader.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Information_C...

But VAERS (the "Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System") is from the CDC, right? Great! Except that it's an open database -- anyone can submit a report and there is no verification. While this doesn't make it useless, it does make it ripe for abuse. "One of the main limitations of VAERS data is that it cannot determine if the vaccine caused the reported adverse event," cautions the FAQ on the VAERS website itself. A lot of information back in the vaccines-cause-autism scare days was literally being added to VAERS by personal injury lawyers.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/may/03/vaers-governm...

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#468

Post by xiphias2 »

avz wrote: post #325
trutannus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, having this magic, absolutely mind boggling potion that prevents serious illness and death isn't already the lottery win of our lifetime A lot of it boils down to people not trusting what they're seeing. Frankly, governments have done the world a disservice by speaking before they really had all the information at the start of the pandemic. In Canada at least an insane amount of what was said turned out to be…

> [...] lots of people see what looks like the "story changing", and distrust anything coming out of their government, [...]. Changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in is a fundamental ability that underlies numerous activities from scientific research to debugging software to driving on a congested road network. Why is it a problem for public health officials to update and change policy as we learn more…

Public health officials knew perfectly that masks give some protection against viruses in general, it was already known 100 years ago. They lied so that the masks don't get bought up instead of just coordinating the distributions using govenmental channels.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#469

Post by aantix »

m0llusk wrote: post #121
aantix wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He just screamed at them. Getting angry is easy. Persuasion is the hard part.

You would need to consult with the original poster to be certain of that. What Linus posted included important facts such as the large number of lives saved and the shared nature of viral immunity. You are reacting primarily to tone as if health in a social context is purely about good feelings.

When Linus starts out with "Please keep your insane" - the reader/original poster will enter a defensive mode.

Imagine that internal monologue - "Am I insane? I'm smart? I'm an analytic person. Why is he calling me insane? HE'S the insane one!"

Because Linus thinks this is a logical fight. But it's not.

Information is _not_ all that's needed to be persuaded. And if he really care about the vax effort, his efforts would be focused on pulling others over to the vax side, not drawing the line thicker by belittling comments.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#470

Post by abenga »

ghoward wrote: post #465
rorykoehler wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mask isn’t going to hurt you if it doesn’t work. Honestly my 3 year old displays more logic in his thought than this. And before you say it no the virus won’t appear on the mask anymore more so than it would enter your mouth and lungs if the mask wasn’t on.

Does heightened levels of carbon dioxide hurt? Everything we know about heightened levels of carbon dioxide in buildings says, "Yes." Why would masks be any different?

It wrinkles my brain that someone would believe this. Surgeons wear masks for hours, sometimes dozens, while performing operations that require an insane level of concentration and dexterity. They are not harmed because of this.

You have just chosen to believe some idiotic conspiracy theory and are grasping at some vaguely plausible objection to continue holding that belief.

Post reply on HN