He's not being sarcastic, he's a genuine MAGA till death type. Death, in this case, from measles-viral-pneumonia, secondary bacterial pneumonia, acute encephalitis, SSPE, MIBE, secondary infections, and pregnancy complications.

There's loads of obvious other causes besides hORdEs oF iLleGalS:
1. Travel-related importations are the most important source, meaning US residents who travel abroad, get infected, and return home. For example, unvaxxed missionaries returning with infections caught overseas and spreading them among their unvaxxed brethren, as described above by an AC
2. International visitors: tourists, business travelers and temporary workers, and migrants including refugees.
Amplification happens among, above all, local clusters with high vaccine refusal rates, and then to a much lesser extent among kids who have yet to be vaccinated, the immunocompromised, people whose vaccinations have waned and people whose vaccinations weren't as effective as they ought to have been. Local clusters with high refusal rates see the highest rates of amplification because they're ideal hotbeds for the disease to spread (as always with the Christofascist right, every accusation is a confession).

This nas been the US pattern for many years, during the period when measles was eradicated: importation followed by local amplification. But by golly, RFK et al are doing their damndest to re-establish endemicity in the US, at which point, there'll be no need to worry about importation, because you'll be manufacturing your measles right there in the US, just the way Donny wants. It'll be one of the few examples of him delivering on that particular promise.

The reasons for assessing covid vaccines to be safe divide into (a) those that do relate to other vaccines, and (b) those that were specific to the covid vaccine testing program.

In (a), we have things like "we know how vaccines work because we've administered literally billions of doses and amassed vast knowledge about human immunology" and "we know how statistical power works in giving us good insights into treatment safety and efficacy" and "vaccine side effects show up quickly, consistent with their pharmacodynamics" and "endpoint accrual depends on event rates and sample size".

In (b), we have "statistical power means that larger trials give faster and more accurate insights into safety and efficacy, and covid vaccine trials were about 20 times larger than a standard trial for a pharmaceutical" and "recruitment and dropouts are the bane of standard trials, but for the covid vaccines there were enormous numbers of people volunteering so recruitment including followup recruitment for dropouts was much faster" and "high community incidence drove very high event rates, meaning endpoint accrual was much faster than for a standard trial". Endpoint accrual scales about linearly with sample size, so the covid trials reached the required endpoint count 20x faster than a standard trial. The net effect of this and all those other factors like recruitment and community incidence was that the trials reached statistical power in three to four months vs two to three years. Standard errors shrink by sqrt 20, ie about 4.5, so confidence intervals are 4.5x narrower for the same observed rates, and effect estimates are 4.5x more precise. Rare safety event detection improves about 10 fold, ie you can spot 1 in 10k rarity events with a 40k person trial where a 2k trial could only spot 1 in 1k rarity events. Etc.

Finally, we need to consider that covid vaccines were rolled out on the scale of billions of doses, meaning that we have giant quantities of data from vast numbers of countries and populations, giving us extraordinary post-launch insights into the vaccines' safety and efficacy. It's not like a CF drug which is taken by a handful of people, and where rare events can remain undetectable.

We have *hugely* better insight into covid vaccine safety and efficacy than we normally get for a treatment, because of all of the above.

As always with this sort of story, whether it's "vaccines aren't properly tested" or which groups are most likely to abuse children etc, the story is the inversion of the truth.

Indeed. We should also remember that while Linus is a good engineer and a stellar project leader, he is not an engineering-teacher.

Stupid people making stupid decisions. The worst one is to not listening to experts.

That is very unfair. Apple usually produces somewhat usable results at excessive prices. The MAGAs do not even come close to that.

If it was a reasonable balance of risk and payback, then they could get a private loan like everybody else.

Pretty much. But a factor in this is that the MAGAs cannot actually think in causalities. They just do keyword matching and then trigger some nonsense response.

Indeed. Space-limit, hard-placed default-deny or something. In any case something placed incompetently and then not tested for. Amateurs.

And incompetent testing or no testing. Pathetic.

Which is so clueless it is endlessly funny. Example: Some years ago I had a call with a well-known US maker of thin clients. There were some security concerns. Then they brought in their senior software/firmware people, which turned out to be located in Shanghai. So much for "made in the US".

Then their products turned to shit both on the hardware reliability side and on the software side. Seems their corporate morals are of equal quality. Hopefully this will kill them.

Indeed. They just do not want to and prefer to screw their users and waste their user's time.

While these are "policy settings", they do not require any external server, were done entirely locally with standard MS tools and this is just a regular "pro" version, not enterprise.

Incidentally, I think the same is true with regards to local accounts (which is what I use). As long as there is some not too obscure way to get one they might be fine, legally. If they block it completely, they are very likely in violation of the GDPR which forbids requiring an account unless absolutely necessary.

Yep. Enterprises whose demise would basically benefit everybody. Essentially a cancer on society.

Doing that sounds like an extreme case of medical malpractice? Maybe criminally negligent homicide as a follow-up to that?