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Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

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Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#181

Post by symlinkk »

bitL wrote: post #122

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 im…

Exactly. The vaccines did not go through the FDA’s typical approval process, they got emergency approval, but the standard approval process is still ongoing. mRNA vaccines have never been used in a large scale setting outside of clinical trials before. Are they safe? Almost certainly. Do we know that for sure yet? No. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? For me, yes.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#182

Post by fendy3002 »

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2425/

I haven't got one since I've had a positive last year. And I was afraid because it's new technology and too fast in delivery. However as time goes I'm not afraid of it anymore and am planning to get one.

However my country only provide sinovac or AZ. I prefer pfizer biontech or moderna.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#183

Post by jmspring »

IvyMike wrote: post #50
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…

There are a LOT of anti-vaxxers who disingenuously couch their advocacy as "I'm only asking questions". It's no surprise when you've seen a 10:1 ratio of bad actors to good (or worse), one might get a little exasperated. In any case, I've recently been reading Lauren Sompayrac's "How the Immune System Works", and it's a technical overview of the immune system. It's not going to make you into a full blown immunologist…

Most of the Q-idiots are of the same mindset. "Go do the research" is a common phrase.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#184

Post by lamontcg »

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…

> I scanned most of the Pfizer trial and was wondering why we expected the immunity after the vaccine to last longer than natural immunity. A typical infection can last for several weeks, so your immune system is presumably exposed to the virus for a similar period of time. And after a natural infection I hear 6 months being thrown around as a typical window of immunity. But I was hearing claims of vaccines lasting for years, when they were only in the trials for less than 6 months. Why is this?

Because the science on the immunity of coronaviruses is very poorly understood because previously they gave us the sniffles for 2 weeks and didn't cause the worldwide economy to shut down so nobody studied them well enough.

And studies had been done which seemed to showed that immune waned after 6-24 months with common cold coronaviruses.

More recent studies have now found that while people will get reinfected with HCoV-229E that immunity to an individual strain seems to be very durable/permanent and that on a scale of years the virus eventually mutates to achieve escape immunity and reinfects:

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

Note that was published as a preprint back in Dec 2020, so They(tm) didn't have this article back last summer when the question of reinfection was first raised.

6 months of immunity after natural infection was what was _guessed_ by some cautious immunologists last summer, based on the prior studies of coronaviruses. With better studies and with more time spent studying the only coronavirus that actually matters it looks pretty confident that its going to be more like years. The vaccines produce stronger results measured by neutralizing antibody titers so we _guess_ that they'll be more certain to hit those kinds of timelines. We still don't understand how long it'll take for this virus to achieve escape immunity, but the safer money is on the idea that it'll become endemic, but second time around those with natural or vaccine immunity won't be anywhere nearly as severely affected (e.g. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/741)

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#185

Post by refulgentis »

harry8 wrote: post #135
XorNot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a fairly good idea about how it will mutate actually. COVID is probably one of the most heavily studied and sequenced viruses ever, and a lot of research has been published on likely mutagenic pathways. The media as always has sensationalized every new strain found and their behaviour is cause for concern, but researchers have not been sounding the alarm over possible vaccine escape - the evidence points to t…

Do you have anything on the Astra-Zenaca vaccine and how well it works against the do called "South-African" variant. There was a story that they'd stopped a trial because the results were so bad. Do we have any harder data?

Yes, Astra-Zeneca has been shown to be repeatedly poor against variants, a big story in the UK right now is whether the increase in cases and sense of being behind the US is due to gov't overly committing to a shoddy vaccine, or if it's variants burning through unvaccinated populations.

The picture isn't nearly as rosey as OP makes it sound, unfortunately: sort of a gish gallop about knowing the rate at which we can expect buffer overflows in C, but in reply to a comment noting we don't have an ETA for ending security vulnerabilities, so they unintentionally implied the picture is good.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#186

Post by chrischen »

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…

The thing is, any random person can be a genuine skeptic by simply having a lack of expertise in the subject. It’s much more interesting to hear from s skeptic that is more than a layman, otherwise we’d just be inundated with skeptics.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#187

Post by skjoldr »

azinman2 wrote: post #142
swader999 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with the push for vaccine passports. Really gets my fur up and question why the need for heavy hands.

It's already been the case that various countries require certain vaccines to enter, or other health clearances. These kinds of standards and even more exceptional for animals, and ultra protective for plants. Why is this any different? Why wouldn't you want someone protected from bringing a (newly) preventable disease into your country?

Because a passport represents a centralized storage of medical data, and that's always a bad idea.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#188

Post by tshaddox »

Quillbert182 wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect a nurse in a COVID ward and an anesthesiologist to have strong answers on this question? Vaccinology is laboratory science. My son works in a vaccinology lab; as far as I know, nobody there has been to med school.

They may not have the answers, but you would think they would have a better idea of where to look than someone with no medical experience at all.

Why do you think that? Perhaps they might have access to some paywalled medical journals, but other than that I don't see why they would have a better idea of where to look than an interested and scientifically literate person who hasn't been to medical school or practiced medicine.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#189

Post by wizzwizz4 »

moralestapia wrote: post #97
zamalek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mRNA in this case has chromosomes that cannot be replicated by nature. You might try researching the mRNA vaccine.

That's what you don't seem to get. I'm not saying it does happen, neither am I saying it does not happen. There's not enough evidence, that's it. Why is that so hard to grasp? And there's evidence of it happening in plenty of other contexts, so one wouldn't be crazy to believe that at least, in principle, it could happen here as well.

> And there's evidence of it happening in plenty of other contexts,

No, there isn't; “mRNA chromosomes” aren't a thing. The comment you replied to made as much sense as “the server rack isn't duplicated on the hard drive”; there's no evidence of it happening, because no possible real-world event corresponds to those words.

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