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Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

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Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#121

Post by m0llusk »

aantix wrote: post #66
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're seriously trying to convince someone they're wrong, you need to be kind, be patient, and have a calm, productive discussion I am doubtful someone spreading anti-vax nonsense can be convinced they’re wrong. (Emphasis on spreading, not just believing or questioning.) What one can do is inhibit the spread of their misinformation. For that purpose, given the stakes, being direct to the point of roughness can…

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.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#122

Post by bitL »

I am eagerly awaiting my vaccine, however we are all alpha/beta testers. A real concern is about safety of those vaccines as typically they require ~3 years of testing and a single fatality aborts their use.

Would you give alpha version to people you love? Why is this concern downplayed? I understand statistics but we have no clue what could go wrong in an early version of a new technology and no data on long-term impact. It's all a big experiment.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#123

Post by swader999 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #87
swader999 wrote: post #70

Ivermectin and HCQ sure got shut down hard even though recent studies are giving them some credit. If they had been a valid option, emergency use authorisation wouldn't have been granted. I honestly don't know what to think about all of this. I've seen a lot of censorship and stifling of speech. Reading Fauci's emails also makes me hesitate. I think trust in the experts will really take a hit going forward. I did get…

> Reading Fauci's emails also makes me hesitate. Which ones, specifically? I keep seeing people say this. There are thousands of pages in the PDF and no one seems to be able to quote anything actually concerning.

They are all over the web. But clearly if you take them all in, you come away from it with the impression that he really pushed gain of function research and hid the fact once this took off last spring. Most of what he said in hind sight and with these emails seems to be more about politics and less about science and educating the masses.

The messaging on masks should have been that only n95 or better are worth the time. One email to a friend pretty much said that.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#124

Post by walrus01 »

The past year has been very instructive (and slightly scary) in revealing the sheer staggering depths of lack of scientific knowledge, and respect for the scientific process, among a vocal but aggressive small percentage of the population. These people truly have no idea of how much education is involved in getting a doctorate level degree in virology, epidemiology or genetics.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#125

Post by outworlder »

rangewookie wrote: post #106

I'm glad Linus stepped in on this one. Unrelated question here - how are people actually consuming mailing lists like this? I always find these links difficult to read and have always assumed there much be some superior format, alternative typefaces for one.

They are getting messages on their email inbox?

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#127

Post by ufo »

macksd wrote: 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…

Most of the times I've seen those ~6 months numbers being quoted, they were lower bounds. We have 6 months of data saying that immunity lasts at least this long.

One reason to expect that immunity might last a long time is that people infected by Sars-Cov-1 still have plenty of antibodies 10 years later.

That said, when it comes to reinfections there is the big problem of variants of the virus. Immunity against one variant might not protect fully against another variant. It's very possible that we'll need to get yearly COVID vaccines, similarly to Influenza. But right now, it's still too soon to worry about that; we're still trying to get everyone vaccinated for the first time.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#128

Post by newacct583 »

refulgentis wrote: post #35
macksd wrote: 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…

TL;DR you heard claims of vaccines' prophylactic effect lasting for years, from somewhere unnamed, and you correctly heard from people in the medical field that no one has any idea of how long it'll last, we're barely 6 months into have a sizable cohort to analyze this with in the US, which itself is far ahead of most of the world. Another massive factor is we have no idea how fast the virus will mutate. Edit: oh, th…

> Another massive factor is we have no idea how fast the virus will mutate.

Sorry, what? We've been sequencing and tracking variants and lineages reliably since the pandemic started. This is very well travelled science. We've seen multiple notable variants arrive already, something that was predicted form the very early days of the pandemic and that surprised no one in the field.

Literally reality is the opposite of what you're saying. The virus is in fact "mutating" in more or less exactly the way that virologists would have expected, given decades of research on the subject.

One of the weirdest angles that the anti-vax/anti-mask crowd tend to take is to somehow argue that covid-19 is simultaneously "just a disease"/"not that bad" and that it's somehow some crazy unpredictable thing that defies the expectations of all of science. And both are wrong!

It's a very conventional novel disease behaving the way novel diseases do. There's a "global pandemic" among some species or another every few years (e.g. 90% of the pacific sea stars disappeared to a novel virus like 15 years ago and they're just now recovering). And that's bad, and requires action!

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#129

Post by [deleted] »

swader999 wrote: post #70

Ivermectin and HCQ sure got shut down hard even though recent studies are giving them some credit. If they had been a valid option, emergency use authorisation wouldn't have been granted. I honestly don't know what to think about all of this. I've seen a lot of censorship and stifling of speech. Reading Fauci's emails also makes me hesitate. I think trust in the experts will really take a hit going forward. I did get…

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#130

Post by moralestapia »

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…

Just curious, what are the safety numbers for other commonly deployed vaccines like the ones for influenza, etc...?
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