Linus Torvalds on mRNA Vaccines
Absolutely agree with everything Linus says here. But I&#x27;m almost equally concerned that there&#x27;s an awful lot of people on the pro-science bandwagon who don&#x27;t actually support science, but simply don&#x27;t tolerate dissent or questioning, and that&#x27;s unscientific and potentially harmful too.<p>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?<p>Fortunately I know a lot of people in the medical field. I asked a nurse who had been in a COVID ICU ward since this began. No idea, he said. Good question. I asked a few others: same answer. I asked several anesthesiologist friends: they did more med-school after all. Mostly no idea. One suggested that the vaccine might be more targeted and get a more potent response, maybe?<p>I tried casting a wider net on Facebook, and got a few nastygrams about how I was spreading uneducated FUD. I asked if they knew the answer but I was told to listen to the experts and read the science, whatever that means to these people. One friend did send me a link to a quote by the Moderna CEO that implied they have machines that can count antibody concentrations and they tracked it over time - I had no idea about that, so that was cool.<p>Eventually someone referred me to their cousin in nursing school who referred me to their brother-in-law who is actually an epidemiologist, and he told me it was a good question and explained all sorts of things about the various types of cells involved in the immune response and how the vaccine delivery invokes a very specific response that is, as one of the doctors suspected, much more targeted at something less likely to change, and how those immune cell types produce longer-lasting immunity. Now I was satisfied and learned something.<p>But those people in the middle think of themselves as being pro-science but they&#x27;re really not. And the more they engage with anti-vaxxers the more ammunition anti-vaxxers will think they have and the more they&#x27;ll dig into their beliefs. It&#x27;s not good.