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Comment by dane-pgp | Hacker News Reader

> tboot (Trusted Boot) is one of the applications related to TPM 2.0 that uses Intel TXT to create an MLE (Measured Launch Environment) to verify a kernel or a hypervisor

For people worried that governments will one day start mandating the use of "approved" operating systems, this will no doubt be reassuring, as it means Linux distros will be able to apply for inclusion on the whitelist.

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This doesn't reassure me at all. Linux can be just as oppressive as windows if configured accordingly.

The fact you can install Linux doesn't mean a government won't force you to use another OS by other mean. Looking at the current news in France which is nominally a democracy, that could include forcing one to take unpaid work leave, denying access to vital (supermarkets) and social places (restaurants, any entertainment facility) and even hospital.

Which seems like a rather reasonable measure to keep people from spreading a dangerous disease for which they refuse to get vaccinated against.

That's why you have to use one of the operating systems on the NSA Certified Secured Operating Systems list, which contain antivirus software[1]. It's a rather reasonable measure, because it keeps computers from spreading dangerous worms/viruses/ransomware for which they refuse to get to protection against.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27917105

Given that experience has shown that vaccinated people can spread the same disease as well AND they are more reckless because they think that they are immune now, I would not consider that a reasonable measure. Now it seems more like punishment for not obeying the government, and less like health concern.

Yes, and the biggest proof of this is hospitals will soon impose the sanitary pass (from 1st August). If the pass was really about public health of the population, hospitals would be the last place to be restricted.

The vaccinated people can spread the disease like you can still get herpes when you use a condom. FYI, condoms grant you a 30% reduction of infection rate for the relevant type.

We should definitely be vaccinated, and in in doing so, using the power and strengths of modern society to reap the benefits we are supposedly living in it for the purpose of creating for ourselves in the first place.

Vaccinated people can spread the virus, but the rates are much[0] less[4] because the immune system is actively controlling[1] the outbreak. Viral load correlates strongly with ones ability to transmit Sars-CoV-2[5]

This beats my herpes example like electricity beats wood gas for lighting.

Vaccinated people get and transmit the Sars-CoV-2 virus at much lower rates[3, page 10][4], and essentially never become very ill. Death is not the only effect of Sars-CoV-2, it has a variety of negative effects from the mild, to the bad, onward to the extremely taxing COVID, and critical hospitalization. This is aside from other secondary social, psychological and economic impacts.

If you rate the risk of death as fine and think we should just take a chance, everybody in the world feeling very ill for a few weeks is not nothing. Those people are air traffic controllers, doctors, mechanics, chefs, pilots, nuclear safety officers, police, etc and their normal operation matters for the operation of society.

[0] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.12.21260377v...

[1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01316-7

[3] - March 2021 representing early evidence: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Ris...

[4] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.11.21253275v...

[5] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147330992...

Now just solve for people that have had the dangerous disease, have recovered from it, and now are arguably better protected from variants than the vaccinated.

You can argue for anything you believe in, but that doesn't make it true.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html

It is not at all clear that we French were actually refusing to get vaccinated.

First, it would seem the least vaccinated people were generally the poorest as well. The vaccine is free, but we generally need to get an appointment through some web site, on our own initiative. Our appointed family doctor did not call us to even ask whether we'd like to be vaccinated. This hints towards an accessibility problem.

Second, when you look at the charts https://covidtracker.fr/vaccintracker/ (Click the "Injections Quotidiennes" tab on the second figure.), you can see that the daily injection didn't fall. It merely plateaued. Sure, first injections did fall, but they did so at the same time second injections were soaring, so they compensated each other. This plateau suggests our vaccination centres were simply functioning at (or close to) full capacity.

Third, on July the 12th, at the time our President made his speech about restricting everyone's freedom (including the vaccinated, since you'd have to present your digital pass basically everywhere to basically anyone), they were justifying our "Reluctance" by quoting vaccination rate across the whole population, which was around 52%. What they didn't say is that this stats includes children under 12, for which vaccination is simply not available, and teenagers, for which our CCNE (Comité Consultatif National d'Éthique) said on June the 9th that it was not clear teenage vaccination was safe enough https://www.ccne-ethique.fr/fr/actualites/enjeux-ethiques-re... It's only reasonable under these circumstances to exclude all underage people from the statistics. I found that the vaccination rate among adults was almost reaching 70%, and climbing.

My conclusion: what our president is attempting is utterly disproportionate and unjustified. Don't get me wrong, we are facing a fourth wave right now. Maybe something does indeed need to be done. But a digital pass? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCUTX1jurJ4 No thanks.

> The vaccine is free, but we generally need to get an appointment through some web site, on our own initiative. Our appointed family doctor did not call us to even ask whether we'd like to be vaccinated. This hints towards an accessibility problem.

Just put walk-in vaccination stands in super-markets/subway stations.

Why exactly is there a need for an appointment to get a 30 second jab + 15 minute observation period?

If you want to be efficient, you want a level of centralisation so you're make sure they can work with maximum efficiency (and therefore at maximum capacity, which you can scale up as there is more demand or more doses).

The biggest problem though is the temperature at which the doses must be stored. Pfeizer's is like -70C°. That's cold, and one does not simply carry a portable freezer to the super-market or subway station. Other vaccines are easier to manage, though.

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