[yolo69420]

We've known the basic physics answer to this for ages, yet even my old physics teacher in high school used to say that he's careful around a lot of electromagnetic radiation like WIFI router at home because he can't be sure it doesn't have an impact.

Empirical evidence always helps, but in the discussion around science results etc. people always seem to forget that there's another important type of evidence, which is the mechanical understanding of a model/system.

You don't really need empirical evidence to know what happens when you throw a ball in the air inside a locked box. Technically the laws of physics could magically change and produce a different outcome, but using your understanding of the mechanics of the underlying system you can predict that the ball is going to fall inside the box with a very low error rate.

Still relevant since this applies to the new covid vaccines as well for example. People worrying about their potential negative effects are worrying for nothing, since even lacking long term empirical evidence we know how they work and have a deep mechanical understanding of mRNA vaccines, and they are not going to cause issues, period.

[giantg2]

Are you saying that we understand the biological effects and their mechanisms for non-ionizing radiation exposure, or that we should be careful because we don't know all of them (specifically mechanisms)?

[ncmncm]

In fact we don't understand their effects. And, we don't even understand what is important about details of the exposure. About all we do know is that modulation is critically important, and that certain modulations under certain conditions of very low power transfer have profound effects.

Ask literally any biologist whether you should expect to be able to calculate the effects on an organism of some stimulus using only physical formulas.

[alexvoda]

> About all we do know is that modulation is critically important, and that certain modulations under certain conditions of very low power transfer have profound effects.

Citation needed.

Seriously, the burden of proof is on you for such a statement.

And be precise, which modulations, which conditions, what effects.

"Certain" and "profound" are filler words in this situation. They mean nothing.

[Gnarl]

You may find this interesting on the topic of importance of modulation, polarization etc.: https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/59/5/92

[hackernewds]

It seems to me your contradicting the original posters comment. Or am I reading that wrong?

[ncmncm]

I don't know who I might be contradicting.

We know pretty precisely how much of a microwave radiation exposure will be absorbed in various kinds of living tissue. We know that the mechanism of absorption is via induced nanoampere currents. We know with certaintly that those nanoampere currents will all end up, finally, as heat.

We don't know all of the effects of the nanoampere currents produced by that absorption, otherwise. We do know that induced nanoampere currents can, under certain circumstances, have profound biological effects.

[yolo69420]

super late response, but I'm saying we understand. EM radiation from your router is just way too low energy to enact any changes in the atoms making up the molecules in you for even chemical let alone biological effects to start playing a role.

the only thing they can do is transfer some heat energy to you, orders of magnitude lower than your average light bulb in the office (certainly entirely incomparable to sunlight).

[toxik]

And these same people go out in the sun to get a tan. Talk about radiation doses.

[rootusrootus]

As someone deep into middle age with plenty of friends in their 50s, I strongly encourage young people to pay particular attention to their time spent in the sun. It is extremely obvious who has led a life outside without sun protection and who has spent most of their time indoors. It really does a number on your skin, especially your face (and scalp, if you are follicle challenged).

[Gnarl]

What are the natural background levels of RF vs. sunlight from an evolutionary perspective? Consider whether organisms would spend energy evolving protections against a dominant spectrum of wavelengths vs. hardly measurable spectrum.

Also, consider that the net resulting incidence voltage from unpolarised sunlight amounts to near zero, whereas man-made RF is polarized.

[kstrauser]

This is true. If the study had shown an effect, it’d be big news because it would up-end what we know about chemistry.

[dxhdr]

Would it be big news? Forgive me for asking but why does UVA/UVB radiation cause skin cancer if it's non-ionizing? Especially from controlled sources like tanning beds. There has to be some pathway of mitochondrial dsyregulation/dysfunction induced by non-ionizing radiation that leads to DNA damage that leads to cancer that we don't fully understand.

We don't understand what causes many types of cancers so I don't get the chemistry-knows-all stance.

[SigmundA]

UVBA/UVB are near ionizing, UVB is right at the transition point, they have enough energy to cause photochemical reactions that damage DNA but not enough to cause full ionization. The key concept is that it is based on the energy of the photons and that above a certain energy chemical reactions occur which can damage DNA.

Radio waves are way way below this level of energy so for them to cause a non thermal effect would mean some new effect we have never seen before anywhere. No one is ruling it out completely but it is very unlikely with no plausible mechanism or data to back it up while UVA/UVB is well understood with respect to photon energy which is related to the ionizing threshold.

[ncmncm]

> for them to cause a non thermal effect would mean some new effect we have never seen before anywhere

100% false. Practically everything that goes on in your body involves, one way or another, motion of ions in solution. Varying E-M fields induce electrical currents carried by such ions. Where and how matters.

It is always a grave mistake to confuse your entire lack of knowledge of a topic with certainty about it.

[SigmundA]

There is absolutely no proof that cellphone levels of power induce ion motion as you have described, I can find some theoretical work at much higher power levels that proposes it as a mechanism but is not definitive.

You need to do better than saying someone is wrong before proclaiming radical new information.

Here is what I found: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69561-3

[ncmncm]

Either there is evidence, or there isn't. With entire absence if evidence, your protestations of impossibility are exposed as threadbare wishful thinking.

[cbxyp]

>since even lacking long term empirical evidence we know how they work and have a deep mechanical understanding of mRNA vaccines, and they are not going to cause issues, period.

Erm, our understanding of the mechanics of COVID vaccines has changed dramatically over the period since their introduction. Initially it was thought that they provided longterm immunity, now boosters. The manufacturer said that spike proteins would not escape the muscle. Pfizers own post marketing study shows that they spread thru out the body. In short, we do not have a deep understanding of the long term impacts, as evidenced by the unexpected drop in efficacy. It may be that so-called "leaky" vaccines such as the COVID vaccines, which do not produce neutralizing antibodies result in strains with worse potential lethality evolving, as is the what happened with Marek's disease in chickens. Initially, vaccine manufacturers and the CDC alike claimed that vaccines were producing neutralizing antibodies. Now 4 out of every 5 hospitalized cases of Covid in Canada have received their 1st, 2nd and third shots.

In short, I hope you were kidding saying that.

[kennywinker]

> initially it was thought that they provided longterm immunity

I don't remember that ever being said. Initially it was HOPED that it might provide longterm immunity - but the vaccines were launched into a world where we still didn't have a conclusive answer to the question "can you get covid twice". If anybody was saying that, they were speaking beyond their knowledge.

As for the unexpected drop in efficacy, that is at least in part due to the fact that the covid-19 we're exposed to today is not the same covid-19 that the vaccine was targeted against.

For the record, I agree with your overall point - mRNA vaccines were not and are not a well understood system with no potential for unknown effects. But neither is covid and given the two unknowns, the vaccine seems the safer choice.

[michaelmrose]

It should be noted that with Marek's disease we have no desire to create an actually healthful living environment which would reduce the prevalence of the disease in the population and instead have been raising billions of chickens PER YEAR in hideous filth with the understanding that we would be killing them before their environment did for 50 years to get where we are with Marek's and despite all this vaccinated chickens are still better off now than unvaccinated chickens were before the vaccine was invented.

Marek's doesn't make a good argument for vaccine skepticism because it represents a worst case arms race in which modern medicine was still by far the better choice. Also we aren't chickens and most diseases on average tend to become less damaging in order to spread better. Neither this average case nor the extreme case of Marek's are fate but the logical thing is to vaccinate and just keep swimming as it will obviously decrease mortality in the short and long term.

Moving on to the percentage of individuals in the hospitals in Canada being vaccinated.

You have entirely misunderstood the numbers if indeed your numbers are actually even accurate. Vaccination rate is very high in Canada around 90% with vulnerable groups being more like 95-98%.

Lets take this to the logical extreme. Imagine that out of one million people you are the only one unvaccinated and are hospitalized along with 100 vaccinated folks. Even in a world where vaccination decreased hospitalization by 99% you could accurately say that most of the people in the hospital were vaccinated as if that proved somehow that vaccines didn't work.

Indeed one expects with a successful vaccination campaign that eventually most of the people in the hospital are going to be vaccinated no matter how effective it is at keeping them out of it because almost all the vulnerable people are. In the last vaccine skeptic in the world universe you could instead look at which portion of each population is sick. In the vaccinated it would be 0.01% vs 100% of the unvaccinated giving the lie to the prior analysis.

Indeed the only reason to lean on that number is deliberate deception or utter failure to apprehend what the numbers mean.

[spacefracas]

Please show where an rna vaccine claimed anything other than a reduction in severe disease and with duration tbd.

[Vecr]

The primary endpoint of the Pfizer trial was any symptomatic disease. That means they would monitor participants for symptoms, and if they had any they would be PCR tested to make sure it was not something else. They claimed the lower end of the 95 confidence interval relative risk reduction was ~90%. You can look at the prescribing guide on the FDA's website for more details. J&J did moderate to severe disease as the primary endpoint though.

[aksss]

The vaccine doesn’t make claims - let’s not anthropomorphize it. The drug companies, public policy authorities, and politicians make claims.

Here’s a link from Pfizer themselves talking about the vaccine *preventing* COVID infection, not just severe symptoms. This is basic Google stuff. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Shall we move on to the talking heads from public health institutions and the politicians? I mean, examples abound and this would be a lay-up. Google is your friend here.

But how can you be unaware of these claims after two years of drama over them in the global public square? Vaccine mandate propositions were largely predicated on the inflated expectations of efficacy - people lost their livelihoods over this. We’re not talking about flippant one-off statements here, but the confidence and endorsement that moves government and corporate policy.

[stinos]

We've known the basic physics answer to this for ages

What is the authorative physics answer which proves this goes one way or another, applied to cell biology, in the human head?

[ncmncm]

That, we don't know. We don't know because no one has studied it in any detail. What we do know is that you can't calculate biological consequences using known physics. Which should be obvious to anyone who knows any biology or physics.

[hackernewds]

That goes counter to the widely accepted belief in physicalism (which could be entirely misplaced)

[ncmncm]

Again: ask any biologist how often they have used quantum field theory to discover whether a drug will work.

It is not rocket science: biology is complicated and messy.