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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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re vaccinated you’re less likely to even catch and, therefore, carry and transmit the virus though.

well, not exactly, you are still as likely to get it if you are in contact with it, you just carry a lower viral load and shed the virus less. It does reduce transmission, but that's not it's main selling point. It's main selling point, especially with regard to everyone getting vaccinated, is that everyone will get sick eventually and if you do get vaccinated you're much less likely to suffer symptoms. So that still…

Because early data shows that vaccinated people can actually reduce the spread as well.

> We are still learning how well vaccines prevent you from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19 to others, even if you do not have symptoms. Early data show that vaccines help keep people with no symptoms from spreading

Source: COVID-19 Key Things to Know About COVID-19 Vaccines https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/keythings...

Reducing the spread means reducing risk to people who cannot get the vaccine due to Heath reasons. It also means the virus is less successful in spreading and therefore less mutation.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He called for someone to be 'retroactively aborted'. Oof, if I was that person I'd be taking a good hard look at myself, he's rarely wrong.

This Linus comment in particular makes me very very ashamed of writing "In every circumstance.". This is the comment in question[1]. Linus obviously could have gone & seen who the original author was. And this is not a defense. But the person he was talking shit about was no longer around. He was talking about some old code, that some other maintainer was having to deal with, in some shitty crap ass situation that ev…

Reminds me of one of the most popular radio personalities where I live. Let's just say that he's got a strong personality with some rough edges, but he's very entertaining on air. I've gravitated to whatever channel he's currently on after being fired from the last one for his behaviour or comments.

But think about it: They hired him specifically for his personality, because he's a cash cow, and then... what? Fired him for it? Did they not listen to his wildly popular show on the previous channel he was on? Did they not know what they were getting themselves into? Did they somehow miss the fact that he was available for hire only because his previous channel fired him?

Who is to blame here? The idiot that got a big cat as a pet, or the cat for being a wild animal?

PS: Jeremy Clarkson being fired from Top Gear is a similar situation. He's a fantastically entertaining TV personality precisely because of his personality.

I strongly believe that people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Linus Torvalds are necessary. You can't convince everyone to play along nicely with kind words alone. Sometimes you have to knock some heads together, and the type of people that do that, well... they're the type that will happily knock heads. It's a package deal.

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

#234
post #118

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.

There are legitimate concerns about the safety of the vaccines. This condescending and belittling attitude towards anyone who expresses any concern about the vaccine safety does not help either. It's the propaganda of the big pharma mafia that tickles your narcissism so you get a kick out of feeling like superior for being 'one of the good guys' who is not against the vaccines. On the one hand you have know-it-all an…

[deleted]

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

#235

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.

I wish people wouldn’t conflate not wanting to take this particular vaccine at this particular time with being “anti-vax”. I am vaccinated. I vaccinate my kids and have done so as recently as a few months ago. I believe in vaccines. But I’m not ready for this one yet. When it has gone through the same FDA approval process as would be used for any vaccine I will be first in line. I don’t see why people are so offended…

Even if the approval process were neglected (which is not the case, as other comments said), it would not make sense to refuse to get it.

The choice we have to make is trade a certainty of mass-deaths (either we continue destroying the economy (and many people die) or we let the virus spread (and many people die too)) for a tiny probability of bad side effects for a minority of people.

I can't see any logic under which it makes sense to refuse the vaccine.

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

#236

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.

I wish people wouldn’t conflate not wanting to take this particular vaccine at this particular time with being “anti-vax”. I am vaccinated. I vaccinate my kids and have done so as recently as a few months ago. I believe in vaccines. But I’m not ready for this one yet. When it has gone through the same FDA approval process as would be used for any vaccine I will be first in line. I don’t see why people are so offended…

The virus didn't go through the approval process either. We already know it has serious side-effects. It's self-replicating and able to spread to others. It probably wouldn't even pass animal testing.

The fact that something is not yet fully approved doesn't mean it's harmful. It also depends on what other vaccines are available. You can have a fully approved vaccine that is more harmful than the newer much better vaccine which is still in the process of being approved (but which is already looking extremely promising). The harm could be in the red tape.

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

#237
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your definition of anti-vaxx? To me, anti-vaxx means someone who is positively against vaccines, as in "vaccines give people X, so people shouldn't get vaccines", where X is some undesirable condition, autism, thrombosis, etc. Being skeptic, but not against vaccines is not anti-vaxx. If someone says "I don't know if vaccines are safe", I don't think that's an anti-vaxx stance. In fact, if you don't know about…

> In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have Then they should also avoid all medications, since similarly to vaccines they probably don't have a deep enough understanding of biochemistry and pharmaceuticals. In the end, trust in medical interventions is based on trust in the institutions that produce them, the individuals that a…

> Then they should also avoid all medications

oh, but they do avoid medications. At least I do and am lucky to be able to. ( I'll make an exception for this vacine though )

> trust

Trust is a desparate last resort measure. Avoid it if you can.

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

#238
I haven't got the vaccine as yet, but I've been very recently summoned to get one by the national health body. I think the biggest deciding factor for me is... Doing research - and, tbh, finding time to understand the intricacies of human biology and how particular vaccines work is difficult/time consuming.

The one thing I'll add which has been skirted around and some commenters have 'skirmishly' mentioned is the amount of distrust for authority, which IMO can be well-placed. The amount of deceitfulness conducted by the state on various matters, important and trivial, over the past several decades (though probably for all of human history - but come to light (due to the internet)) has fostered this mistrust. The list of lies or misinformation is extensive; the wars, the bailouts, the disregard for communities, the deportations: the policies; in essence the corruption and ulterior motives of the state is and has been questionable. Thus, the backlash against the vaccine(s) is understandable and I partly feel it within me too.

Also, to make a rational decision you have to have a lot of the main pros and cons, but what we have been supplied with are just extreme incorrect cons and/or extreme & well-placed pros - there has not been any balanced adult 'conversation' (i.e., a balanced cost-benefit assessment geared towards the individual) which in its absence is unscientific and fairly illiberal. That's my 2 cents.

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