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Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

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Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#201

Post by 542458 »

swader999 wrote: post #80
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…

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

Serious question, how is a vaccine passport any different from a proof of immunization (one common form being the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis), which is standard fare for travelling to/from many countries already? We’ve been using these to combat the spread of diseases like yellow fever for years.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#202

Post by dundarious »

panny wrote: post #40
lalaland1125 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did he say that you would consider to be wrong or unverified?

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…

All due sympathy to your family member, but there is potential for serious side-effects in almost every medical intervention. It's true that these vaccines received emergency authorization, so the known unknowns are greater in number than usual, but this vaccine appears to be safer than many commonly prescribed medications. It's as irrational to be anti-vax as it is to be anti-medications. First do no harm does not imply a guarantee against all potential harm in all cases for all people (the world is too complicated to guarantee such a thing).

(I do think Western medicine is slavishly focused on medications and relatively blind to prevention but that's a separate issue)

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#203

Post by guardiangod »

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.

>There's not enough evidence [to prove it doesn't happen]

What is your idea 'enough evidence'? Do scientists have to gather up every possible reverse transcription gene in the known universe and test them?

In principle, anything can happen. Specific cosmic rays can hit my desktop's memory/CPU in such a way that my computer will display a giant smiley face for the next 10 seconds. After all, cosmic rays are known to corrupt computations in plenty of other contexts.

I can even propose more than 1 possible pathways for that to happen!

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#204

Post by chris_va »

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…

Some class of vaccine hesitancy boils down to miscalculating expected value.

The expected value of getting a vaccine is very high, but people choose not to anyway, presumably due to misinformation or miscalculation.

Lotteries here are exploiting miscalculations of expected value to incentivize behavior (0.1% of saving my life? phaw, but $100 expected value?!).

It feels a bit like patching a security bug with its own vulnerability.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#205

Post by lettergram »

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…

https://americasvoice.news/video/DHUF0DZxs4KXyGX

Jump to the 5 min mark. Dude explains some other stuff that works but is being suppressed.

For reference, I’m pro vaccine, but not one that hasn’t been tested for 10 years. Especially not for a disease that has a 99.99% survival rate in my age range. I’m appalled that anyone with an opinion (who’s educated!) can’t share that opinion, they’ve been banned.

For reference, I have a minor in bioengineering and read papers on this stuff. My wife works in genetics and I’ve assisted on and off. This virus and the vaccines are still active areas of research and what the NIH, CDC, WHO, etc act as fact is in fact just an unproven and likely correct in some and incorrect in other respects for virtually everything — from origin of disease to vaccines. We haven’t had enough time to study.

That being said, stop talking about vaccines when you’re developing the Linux kernel

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#206

Post by moralestapia »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #176
moralestapia wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The m in mRNA stands for messenger. Whoops, you got it backwards. Nature does not really care whatever names we give to things. Come on, you can do better than that :)

I have no idea what on earth you are trying to say to me. I'm a former homemaker whose interest in understanding genetic stuff in layman's terms is rooted in having a deadly genetic disorder. I know lots of useful health info and I had a class in medical terminology as part of a certificate program while doing a corporate job that involved reading medical records all day, but I sometimes have significant trouble foll…

>I have no idea what on earth you are trying to say to me.

I can explain: that whether the m stands for 'messenger' or 'mars' or 'male' doesn't make a single difference pertaining its behavior in nature.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#207

Post by alexvoda »

premium-komodo wrote: post #59

If you think it might be a little inappropriate to care much about a programmer's endorsement of a vaccine, here's an actual famous doctor saying "for God's sake don't take this thing". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBv3A8-ShI

Ok, I'll bite. I was willing to assume he might have some legitimate concern. A quick Google hoever reveals he was a Covid denier from the start. There is plenty of evidence that the pandemic is real. Why should the oppinion about the risk of the cure of someone who denied the risk of of the pandemic, be relevant?

How does a credentialed person go off the rails so badly??

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#208

Post by rfrey »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #53
macksd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just happen to know a lot of anesthesiologists and they went to all of med school - I didn't. They were easy to ask and know more than me. The first nurse, again, more medical education than me to begin with, was very interested in the science beyond his work and was obviously briefed on the situation at work as it changed. I just figured it might have been more common knowledge than it turned out to be. My point i…

It's a little bit like asking a random software engineer on the street on how GPU drivers work internally: they're unlikely to have an actual informed opinion.

More like asking an microelectronics engineer how 3 phase motors work. She probably took a course in school although it may have been awhile and it's not her specialty.

It's a feature of engineering and scientific education that there is a corpus of knowledge that every person in a discipline (say EE, or medicine) is expected to have learned (if not retained). I imagine all doctors learn quite a bit about the immune system in medical school.

Given that a "random software engineer on the street" may have a CS degree, an MBA, a 6 week bootcamp, or be totally self-taught, the example isn't analogous IMO.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#210

Post by krastanov »

canadianfella wrote: post #157
walrus01 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a LOT of anti-vaxxers who disingenuously couch their advocacy as "I'm only asking questions" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

I’ve been accused of this before and it’s fucking bullshit.

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, we should have rigor when accusing someone of bad behavior: do not just name the behavior, but describe why the name fits.

Sure, this is no fun, but this whole discussion exists because trolls exist: can we really expect anything pleasant to come out of that premise.

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