Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

'Any Linux discussion list isn't going to have your idiotic drivel pass uncontested from me'

Linus Torvalds has used some of his strongest language in years to smack down a Linux Kernel Mailing List poster who made some odd remarks about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

The incident started in a Linux Kernel Mailing List thread titled “Maintainers / Kernel Summit 2021 planning kick-off” that commenced in April 2021.

Event organisers have decided the event should be virtual this year. However, some in the thread have used the thread to ask if increasing vaccination rates mean that decision could be revisited.

A poster using the name “Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult” weighed in with the following opinion on COVID-19 vaccinations.

I know *a lot* of people who will never take part in this generic human experiment that basically creates a new humanoid race (people who generate and exhaust the toxic spike proteine, whose gene sequence doesn't look quote natural). I'm one of them, as my whole family.

In response to a suggestion in the thread that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, Weigelt responded “Pandemic ? Did anybody look at the actual scientific data instead of just watching corporate tv ? #faucigate”.

Torvalds’ response lacks some of the crudeness that got him into trouble in 2018 when the kernel development community politely insisted he stop abusing colleagues on mailing lists. Torvalds apologised, took a break, participated in empathy training and has been notably restrained on the LKML ever since.

But he made an exception for Weigelt, opening his riposte as follows:

Please keep your insane and technically incorrect anti-vax comments to yourself.

“You don’t know what you are talking about, you don’t know what mRNA is, and you're spreading idiotic lies,” Torvalds’ post continues. “Maybe you do so unwittingly, because of bad education. Maybe you do so because you’ve talked to ‘experts’ or watched youtube videos by charlatans that don’t know what they are talking about.

“But dammit, regardless of where you have gotten your mis-information from, any Linux kernel discussion list isn’t going to have your idiotic drivel pass uncontested from me.”

Torvalds then proceeds to explain that mRNA can’t create a new race and exhorts Weigelt to educate himself and rely on credible sources of information.

He concludes his post as follows:

And if you insist on believing in the crazy conspiracy theories, at least SHUT THE HELL UP about it on Linux kernel discussion lists.

Source