Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#251

Post by lamontcg » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

occamrazor wrote: post #71

DoreenMichele wrote: post #34

mRNA doesn't change your genetic sequence in any way. It is the exact same intermediate - and temporary - kind of material that your cells generate internally all the time as part of your normal cell processes The m in mRNA stands for messenger. I'm failing to find anything I consider to be a succinct explanation in layman's terms (other than the one in the piece under discussion: all that the mRNA vaccines do is to…

Not exactly. The mRNA fragments are instructions to build pieces of the virus. Your cells execute the mRNA instructions, build virus fragments, and _then_ the immune system notices all these unknown fragments and learns how to destroy them.

Technically the cells manufacture the spike protein and your body will develop neutralizing antibodies to the spike protein, the cells will also display the antigen (spike protein) on the surface of the cells in an MHC-antigen complex. That'll trigger CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells to also go into action. Some of the cells will be transported to lymph nodes and the gut for processing by the immune system. CD8+ cells will learn to recognize the MHC-antigen on the surface of cells and kills the "infected" cells.

Then next time around B-cells and T-cells are primed from all this target practice and its a lot easier, even if the neutralizing antibodies wane.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#252

Post by dan-robertson » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #140

Just to clear one thing: Vaccines actually do edit the genetic code, but only of some select B-cells. And so does any other antigen that your body develops antibodies for. The process is very complicated and beautiful, and is pretty much exactly the same as in plenty of other multicellular life forms. If you've ever wondered what's the "storage format" for all the recipes for all the different antibodies that your bo…

That feels like a stretch to me. Your statement is a bit like saying a big bag of labelled images edits the ‘code’ of a [neural network] computer program to make it recognise images. But everyday speech means something different by ‘editing code’. The genetic material of the B-cells, used to generate antibodies, does not come from the vaccine which contains genetic material used to generate antigens.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#253

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

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 think part of the problem is that the science keeps changing as we find out more. Were masks going to help with Covid? No, then yes, then kind of drifting back toward maybe no.

Are RNA vaccines going to work without having many side effects? From what we know now, yes. We may learn something from trying it large-scale, though. (Just today there was this article on HN about men suffering unexpected levels of heart complications.)

This leads to people who are "pro science" but have out-dated science. And many people, even those who want to "follow the science", have run out of time and energy to keep following the science. So they treat "science" as frozen in time, not as a process.

And then you have people with vested interests and/or political angles. That includes the vaccine makers, and at times may include the CDC.

All in all, sorting out the science has become a real bear on this particular issue. People get tired, and freeze at the position the science supported when they gave up tracking.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#254

Post by sjansen » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

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…

> There are a LOT of anti-vaxxers who disingenuously couch their advocacy as "I'm only asking questions".

And they quickly reveal their bad faith, at which point they can safely be ignored.

Or, if you don't feel like discussing it, it's easy enough to say "I don't know about that, but the anti-vaccine stuff sounds like lies to scare people so I decided to trust my doctor."

If honest questions are met with hostility, while the anti-vaxxers are friendly and "helpful", guess who's going to be more influential?

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#255

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #240

It should have been you are banned / strike one for being off topic. Linux is not about vaccines either way. All this off topic garden shed stuff needs to be shutdown in open source. And normal companies too if they want to prosper.

I don't know much about Linux, but if you are too quick to say something off topic cannot be discussed at all and even trying to discuss it is a bannable offense, that tends to kill conversation and interfere with getting people to participate, to get along well enough to get things done, etc.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#256

Post by galgalesh » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #140

Just to clear one thing: Vaccines actually do edit the genetic code, but only of some select B-cells. And so does any other antigen that your body develops antibodies for. The process is very complicated and beautiful, and is pretty much exactly the same as in plenty of other multicellular life forms. If you've ever wondered what's the "storage format" for all the recipes for all the different antibodies that your bo…

Is it fair to say vaccines rewrite it, though? It's more like your immune system rewriting it in response to the vaccine.

It's like saying a virus rewrites antivirus programs. Yes, the databases get updated for every new virus, but it's not the virus doing that directly.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#257

Post by adventured » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

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.

It is bullshit. It helps to create an atmosphere where you can't ask questions or debate.

I'm entirely pro-vaccines. However, I'm simultaneously entirely in favor of people asking questions, no matter what their intentions are. Their intentions do not matter. You either know your stuff or you do not. It's always better to draw out the eg anti-vaccine types. If something is defensible, then don't be a coward about it, don't be lazy, respond with a decent answer. Put in some effort. Use it as an exercise for your own brain, your own beliefs, your own ability to discuss and debate in an (ideally) civil society. Only the anti-vaccine arguments benefit from not doing that.

The shut-down angle always comes from cowardice and or intellectual weakness. You can tell a lot about someone by whether they're terrified of a discussion. Shut-down attempts are meant to evade personal shame (and more rarely to avoid putting in the time/effort), while preserving an intellectual or moral foundation established by someone else who did put in the effort.

Nearly all shut-down attempts come from weakness. If the position is important, such as vaccines, then that weakness only encourages the skeptics even more. They can practically sense it. The right thing to do is to engage and push back with facts (and or even links, with which all the hidden passive readers can go make up their own minds as to whether they agree or not), even if you don't have all day to argue a topic.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#258

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

mnouquet wrote: post #116

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…

> prevents serious illness and death Only in 60+ patients with co-morbidity.

>> prevents serious illness and death

> Only in 60+ patients with co-morbidity.

That's false. See [1] for data on deaths by age in the US. There's about 115,000 deaths in the age groups [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#259

Post by moultano » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #237

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…

The "magic" from vaccinations comes from vaccinating most of the population so that the epidemic fizzles out. In that scenario it doesn't matter that much whether you personally are vaccinated or not. An unvaccinated person benefits from herd immunity like a vaccinated person does. From the viewpoint of a healthy young person, the risk/reward ratio of taking a vaccine is bad.

No way. We need nearly everyone to get the vaccine, with the abstainers purely randomly distributed, in order to reach herd immunity, which we aren't going to reach, so it's going to keep spreading endemically, indefinitely. If you aren't vaccinated, you will inevitably get it, if not this winter, than the next, or the next.

Even for healthy young people, the risk of the vaccine is orders and orders of magnitude less than the risk of the virus. This is true almost by construction, because it's strictly less spike protein.

Re: Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines

#260

Post by passivate » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 11:13 PM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #41

lalaland1125 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, there's a lot of evidence for mRNA transfer between species in other kingdoms; read on about reverse transcriptase [1] that is literally how some viruses spread when they enter the human body. Whether that mechanism still goes on when some of the components are missing, well, we presume it won't happen but there's not enough and definite evidence for that. And for those who love appealing to authority, I do hav…

>we presume it won't happen but there's not enough and definite evidence for that.

What evidence are you looking for here? Any specific analytical protocol that you have in mind? I am curious to know what you're referring to.

As you know, the body doesn't just tolerate foreign mRNA like that (TLR3, TLR8 activation, RIG-I etc, microrna silencing, etc). So ironically, the vaccine has to first defeat our body's immune response, and then let the immune response work so that we get protected. That being said, the mRNA in the vaccine is structurally different from naturally occurring mRNA in that its been carefully engineered as a delivery platform. I am not intimately familiar with the studies you link to, but we can't just form a causal link because "its rRNA" - you need to evaluate it a bit more in the appropriate context.