Live data from Hacker News

Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

lore.kernel.org

541–550 of 649 posts

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#541
post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wou…

While this person is probably beyond help, it effectively stopped him (and others) from writing more nonsense on LKML.

I think this was the best result we could achieve.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#542
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 -…

This is a good point. Such comments (Linus') are much more for preaching to the choir than to try and change people's minds. One thing I'd add (or hypothesize anyway) is that in these kind of debates, I don't believe the crux of the disagreement is a misunderstanding of the technical points of why it works. It's more a natural reaction to people being told they have to do something, that causes an adverse reaction in…

It's not Linus job to give anti-vax people a platform on a kernel mailing list. It's his job to nip it in the bud and let them know why he will cut them from the list if they keep up the garbage antivax rhetoric.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#543
post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of such 'reasonable views' that are ignored? Because I don't. I do see a lot of reasonable objections making headlines or having a large impact. E.g. side effects halting entire campaigns for weeks, or large articles highlighting the dowsides of various vaccines, debates on particle sizes and fluid dynamics on national TV and so on.

"If you and your family are more protected these days, it's because of all those other people who made the right choice" I do not understand that from my point of view, what I heard what that vaccine didn't stop you from being contagious to other people. I'm looking for an educated answer, I'm not anti-vaxx, far from it, I'm just curious about it.

They virus "survives" much shorter time in a vaccinated body hence less chance of tranmission to a new host.

That time is however not zero.

Furthermore, you can carry the virus outside your body.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#544
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDA has a process for approving vaccines. It seems to work reasonably well. At this point I have no issue with their process, which should, hypothetically, identify any long term effects. There currently are no preventative treatments for COVID that have completed the FDA approval process. The J&J shot at least uses a method previously used in an approved vaccine, but in that case (Ebola), the calculus probably m…

All the vaccines available in the US have completed the FDA approval process, which was allowed to proceed to later stages before an earlier stage was complete, to accelerate development. The length of time passed from last trial until approval was roughly the same as for most other vaccines, from what I recall.

That is incorrect. They are available for emergency use authorization. The FDA doesn’t designate that status[0].

Only Pfizer, IIRC, has even submitted a request for approval, and that was just last month. Minimally FDA approval takes ≈6 months, but it could also take several years.

As mentioned above, the vaccines being offered in the US are unlike any other that have been approved previously for use in the general population. I don’t think other vaccines (except the Ebola vaccine for specifically J&J) are reasonable analogues.

0 - https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-...

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#545
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is this a conspiracy theory? Why jump to that conclusion about this person's perfectly reasonable statement and hypothesis? Stories of children either passing out or dying because they were required to wear masks during track outdoors. Or hell, walking my normal pace (quite fast), I breathe pretty heavily and the amount of oxygen my body takes in with a mask is markedly reduced versus when I'm not wearing one. It…

> Stories about children either passing out or dying because they were required to wear masks.

Do you have any citations for these events, because they seem to be absurd misinformation.

The country I'm in (Singapore) has legally required masks in public since last year (as have many other countries) so everyone is wearing masks, and so far, I have not heard of a single case of people suffering due to wearing masks.

In fact, I even wear my mask when I go running and I have never felt any significant issues with breathing, even after hours of vigorous exercise.

If masks could reliably cause breathing issues in any significant way, given the number of people in the world who are wearing masks every day, we should expect a statistically significant number of such cases, not just a few cherry-picked anecdotes.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm concerned, especially in the tech community, that there is so much aggravation toward a group that wants more data before making a decision that could have long term repercussions. The CDC has a page describing past vaccine safety issues, the most recent being 2013[0]. Errors include unexpected side effects or complicates and manufacturing issues. The treatment being offered is unlike any other mainstream protoco…

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. Why would you take the higher risk of choosing the experimental virus over the experimental vaccine? It seems to me you're holding the vaccine to higher standards as the virus?

I’m treating them the same: minimizing the likelihood of them entering my body.

Also, there is 12 months more data for the virus than the vaccines. Based on available data, I’m not in an at risk group and have been tested every time I’ve knowingly had contact with anyone who has been infected.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#547
post #480
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what he said and he could be wrong but I'm not making up anything > that the mRNA vaccines do is to add a dose their own specialized sequence that then makes your normal cell machinery generate that spike protein so that your body learns how to recognize it... your body now knows how to recognize and fight off a new foreign protein So what happens if some faulty proteins are created from this process, any cha…

What Linus writes is accurate, you may have misunderstood him. A dose of mRNA is transported to a few cells, and these cells temporarily gets the command to create spike proteins. These proteins will be transported outside your body and be recognized by the immune system. There is no need to constantly create them as the immune system can learn from this alone. And it is temporary because mRNA is constantly degrading…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMXGGmBfkf8&t=125s

It says "low risk" of being integrated into the genome. Sounds like there is still a risk.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, who’s to say “things won’t change” again, such that they find there is cause for concern after all? I’m not saying that’s what I believe, but if you’re admitting that we’re “changing and updating our beliefs as evidence comes in”, that also implies that we didn’t — and may still not — have all the data in front of us to make decisions.

Indeed but what should we do? Nothing??? We have to make the best decision for ourselves and the society around us based on the best knowledge we have. Yes science always allows for things to be disproven, but if we follow your logic we’d not use any medicines or treatments. Come on.

Certainly not.

Just saying that we can’t be too hard on the folks that are a little hesitant with the vaccine as things evolve. Simply have a bit of empathy, at least for folks that are simply uncertain about how to handle things for themselves and their family (vs. those trying to stop the world from getting vaccinated).

I’m fully vaccinated, but I know some that I wouldn’t consider “antivaxx” but are just not sure about this one for them/their families, and I’m trying not to be judgmental of them.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#549
post #15

Absolutely agree with everything Linus says here. But I'm almost equally concerned that there's an awful lot of people on the pro-science bandwagon who don't actually support science, but simply don't tolerate dissent or questioning, and that's unscientific and potentially harmful too. I scanned most of the Pfizer trial and was wondering why we expected the immunity after the vaccine to last longer than natural immun…

So my hypothesis is that groups of experts, or expert-adjacent, that are used to dealing with the public pelting them with questions and then ignoring them anyways, will be prone to shooting down smart, good faith questions too.

Here's an analogy most people here should respond to: a family member asks, "you know about computers, why isn't my [insert some app or website] working?" Now, most of the time, do you think that they actually want the details? Even if many possible explanations leap to mind automatically, maybe it's some weird application that you've never heard of, and you really don't want to take the time at that moment to go figure it out for them. But generally, they're not asking for you to layer on the jargon and actually explain the nitty gritty details of why something isn't working, they just want you to make it work. Very seldom, sometimes that person really wants to absorb some real knowledge and learn. But that's not the common case by far.

So if most of us here are "computer people" to the lay public, then people working in many disparate fields of medical work are lumped together as "human body fixing people". Try to perspective take on what kinds of questions they usually get and from whom they usually get them.

For a large portion of the population, there is not much will to learn deeply about things. For them, science is surface level, and not much different from faith. We still need those people to "believe" in science even if they're never going to work hard to understand it, because the human animal hasn't changed that much in the past few thousand years, and people who are curious enough today to become scientists may well have been burned at the stake as witches by the same kind of people who are reflexively dogmatic today, and those doing the burning would have felt just as justified about protecting the public safety.

I get irritated with it too sometimes, and increasingly some entities like corporations are trying too hard to turn the act of science into a PR battle. It's extremely corrosive, because a lot folks know just enough to nod their heads at something that sounds good without checking whether it's a company pushing some really flaky "science" or real, solid research.

So please, ask smart questions, but also be careful where you sow doubt. Sometimes it's better to just hit the books if you really want to know something. We're not going to reach a state any time soon where everyone that claims to love science is actually going to love the act of methodically analyzing and questioning everything. We're probably going the other direction lately.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been accused of it in another context, so I sympathize with your frustration, but this concept is not bullshit. It is important that we have a taxonomy of fallacies and troll tactics because that makes it easier to detect them. Regrettably, it also makes it trivial for bad-faith actors to just accuse everyone they dislike of some named troll tactic. The cure is not to stop using names for bad behaviors. Rather…

Even if you know for certain that someone is an anti-vaxxer, disregarding their opinion/question by accusing them of sealioning is a fallacy. Someone is not a "bad-faith" actor for asking precisely the questions that are hard to answer, even if they're using those questions to support a wrong idea. If you don't have time to answer their questions, don't answer them. If you do have time, you have a good opportunity to…

Sealioning is to good faith questioning as DDoS is to genuine web traffic.
Post reply on HN