Linus Torvalds Encourages Kernel Developers & Everyone To Get Vaccinated

[pal666]

I wonder if mRNA vaccines could be used against the common flu/cold.

even common flu/cold itself can't be used against common flu/cold one year later or of different strain

[coder]

I wonder if mRNA vaccines could be used against the common flu/cold.

It's my understanding they were being investigated for use in flu vaccines, when Covid-19 came along.

Also, I think I heard that antibodies from some cold viruses are helpful against SARS-CoV-2. I guess it's not symmetrical, sine a lot of people seem to be catching colds, lately, now that more people are going maskless. Cold virus antibodies tend not to last more than a couple months.

I also wonder if in the future the seasonal flu will integrate the COVID19 strain(s), like with the "Spanish" influenza strain after WW1.

From what I've heard, SARS-CoV-2 tries to lock out other viruses, when it infects a cell. This should reduce the chances of virus interbreeding, but I suppose it's not impossible. IIRC, that's how HIV was created.

I'm foggy on the details, but I'll post references, if I find any.

[coder]

I'm not saying what you imply.

I'm "just sayin" that the "RNA to DNA" process is close enough to the "mRNA to DNA" process that, over short or long, you *will* see that in action. You'll find enough examples of similar assertions in history ("that boat is un-sinkable", "that reactor vessel is safe", "the marxists will never infiltrate USA" ...)

Go back and read Med_ 's post.

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/general-discussion/1261141-linus-torvalds-encourages-kernel-developers-everyone-to-get-vaccinated?p=1261652#post1261652

[coder]

This is almost funny, and to me mostly proofs how brainwashed you are.

Peter Borger, who is microbiologist, has explained what is wrong with the Gorman Drosten paper. (and how the pcr test is used)

The manual of the pcr test confirms his criticism. This person who you are calling a crackpot, designs pcr test, for his profession.

I think you're getting too hung up on this point. The accuracies of the various tests are well-understood, by now. Test-positivity is primarily used by epidemiologists as a leading indicator. In hindsight, the more important statistics are hospitalizations and deaths.

But the mainstream media knows more about his, according to your logic, then a microbiologist.

Not exactly. Mainstream science, including microbiologists. Mainstream media gets their info from epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists who reference published, peer-reviewed studies (when available).

I think it's a mistake to get enthralled by a single personality. Even if his credentials are what he claims, any large community has a fringe with some extreme views. That's why science has a long-established practice of peer-review, where other experts in the field review papers prior to their publication. Often, there's a further step where others try to repeat the experiment and see if they get the same result. Yet other researchers do meta-analysis, in an attempt to integrate multiple individual studies into a larger picture.

If this guy has real concerns, the thing he should do is gather data and publish (or convince his colleagues to do so), not get on youtube and make a bunch of videos.

[coder]

Actually one can somewhat speculate about what education you have after reading your comments. I certainly have an idea.

If you cannot convince through data and force of logic, you're certainly not going to win anyone over with snide remarks. That sort of dismissive attitude is one of the reasons behind the popularity of anti-elitism.

If your goal is to change minds, you need to meet people where they're at and figure out why they believe what they do. For instance, why is blackiwid seemingly more invested in believing fringe sources than government or health data?

There's unfortunately no shortage of well-educated people who reject the scientific consensus. An Ivy League-educated member of my own family is an anti-vaxxer. So, it's not only a matter of education.

[coder]

And you need to ask: is that the risk reduction of merely testing positive? Mild symptoms? Severe disease? Death? It’s not always clear.

Yes, it is clear, if you make even the slightest effort to look for it. The top-line numbers are against risk of infection. Protection against hospitalization or death are even higher.

This has relevant data, and links to a lot of the further details:

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/co...ine-comparison

For most people, the ARR for Covid vaccines is extremely low, because for most people, the risk to begin with is very low.

You're just making a numerical version of the argument that "we're almost at herd immunity, so I'm pretty safe if I don't take the vax". No one is disagreeing with that, but not only are you safer by getting vaxed, but also you'd be contributing to herd immunity instead of leeching off it.

The typical anti-vax stance is to leech off herd immunity, whenever possible (and even sometimes, when not).

In the UK, the probability of a child of school age dying of Covid in a 12 month period (the time vaccine antibodies might be expected to last) is about 1 in 700,000.

This is backwards-looking data, not accounting for the Delta variant -- now the dominant strain in the UK. That variant is known to attack kids more aggressively than the original strain.

Always look past the headlines.

That would be good advice for you to take, as well.

[coder]

Nah. I am perfectly healthy, have had hundreds of coronavirus infections throughout my life (It's called flu). Covid-19 is just another coronavirus, as name suggests.

You're either badly misinformed or just trying to make a mockery of this entire discussion.

• Corona virus just refers to a structural category of viruses, not a characterization of their risk
• The original SARS virus had a fatality rate of 10%, in the 2003 outbreak.
• So far, MERS has had a fatality rate of 34%.

Don't be fooled into thinking that you can safely ignore all corona viruses, just because some aren't highly lethal.

I will leave vaccinations to you.

Since you forgot to address these points, from my previous message, I'll repeat them for you:

1. Not everyone can take the vaccine, and vaccines don't work for everyone. We need herd immunity to protect these people.
2. The longer we go without herd immunity, the more the virus can mutate, and that poses an increased risk even to the vaccinated.

Perhaps you will think of the vulnerable, such as transplant recipients, people with autoimmune diseases, those undergoing chemotherapy, etc. and play a part in helping us reach herd immunity.

[coder]

You claim that flu shots are 60% effective? Flip a coin like?

No, it's not like a coin flip. It's a relative risk reduction of getting infected. After your recent post about RRR and ARR, you should know better.

To spell it out, that means you take your baseline risk and multiply it by 0.4. So, that's indeed a substantial reduction. Definitely worthwhile, for the vulnerable and those around them.

How is that better from vitamin C, D and Zinc?

To truly answer this, one would have to know why the efficacy rate of the vaccine isn't higher. I believe it's in large measure due to the fact that the flu vaccine traditionally doesn't cover all known strains, and it takes long enough to produce that they sometimes mispredict which will be the dominant strains.

I don't look at them as mutually exclusive. Most likely, the combined benefit is even greater. I'd rather do both.

And this is exactly what I do:

• vitamin C: 1500 to 2000+ mg/day
• vitamin D: 1000 to 2000+ IU/day
• vitamin E: 60+ IU/day (d-Alpha tocopherol) + d-Gamma tocopherol and tocotrienols.
• Zinc: 15+ mg/day

I do this year-round, in fact. Before I could get the Covid-19 vaccine, I used some other adaptogenic immune modulators, also. Not proven against Covid-19, but I figured probably worth a shot.

Anyway, you surely have study behind this number to quote? Please do, we all want to hear the source.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-wor...ss-studies.htm

[coder]

Other vaccines may have saved millions, but in Covid-19 case, we don't know that yet, as Covid-19 vaccines have just been rolled out

In fact, we can look at the drop in Covid-19 infections vs. the same time last year. Even after accounting for the immunity people had from previous infections, new infections have dropped by enough to have population-level data on their efficacy.

and are designed only for emergency use.

No, they were designed for general use, but only so far approved for emergency use.

[coder]

Last year, we also had sharp decrease in infections and deaths, throughout entire world. There was no vaccines back then. It happened because of summer.

It did not happen only due to the summer. It also dropped because of government restrictions put in place, in response to the surges. However, you're trying to equate one decrease with another, without even looking at the magnitudes. That's not a rational approach.

Here's weekly data, in the US. Our case numbers are significantly lower than a year ago, even though basically all restrictions are now lifted.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...iew/index.html

That's how coronaviruses works. If you have any doubts, check seasonal flu death rates and charts and compare them with Covid-19 charts. Flu, and Covid-19, are both coronaviruses.

That's not correct. You're over-generalizing.

Some viruses are temperature-dependent, while SARS-CoV-2 appears not to be. The seasonality is mostly a function of people moving indoors. Indeed, the hotter climates tend to see an increase in cases, during the peak of the summer, since people are back indoors.

Also, infections are not deaths. We talk about deaths here. Coronavirus infections have 99.9% survival rate with or without vaccines.

• To die, you have to be infected, which means you have to get it from another infected person.
• The rate of infections and deaths is higher for variants.
• The rate of long-term complications is much higher than death.
• If you get infected, you could pass it on in a chain of transmission that leads to suffering and death.