That explains the first two points, but not the last. It is also consistent with a "moderator takeover" that the original commenter claimed. As it stands, the subreddit hasn't gone full blown /r/sino so it's hard to definitively tell.
> Please don't turn every observation into the world into a conspiracy.
Actually I never claimed there was any sort of conspiracy, just a bias. /r/politics has a liberal (and probably bernie) bias, but I, nor most people would call it a conspiracy.
> It's possible for people to lack your nationalist fervor without being paid shills.
Sure. OTOH you don't seem to think it's possible for me to bring up this topic without being nationalist.
And yes, if you think celebrating the survival of Chinese grandmothers and grandfathers is so unbelievable that that anybody upvoting it must be a shill, you are blinded by politics. There are forums made for spewing out attitudes like yours, on the grimier parts of the internet. Please consider commenting over there instead, so we can keep HN clean. Thanks.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a comment alleging that the subreddit had a pro-china bias[1]. Personally, I've noticed some patterns that seem to be consistent with those allegations:
* I frequent /r/all. when the subreddit shows up on /r/all (first or second page), it's almost always negative news about some country other than china
* I visited the subreddit on occasion and negative news about china are... few and never anywhere close to the top. At the writing of this comment[2] the only post about china is good news about a 100 year old man recovering from the infection.
* A few days ago there were stories of a hotel collapse in china (it was used to quarantine patients). Posts from various subreddits were showing up on /r/all (first page), however in the /r/coronavirus subreddit the story was in the middle of the first page. You'd think that if such a story was showing up on /r/all, that it'd be #1 or #2 place in the subreddit.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438754
[2] https://archive.is/DBWSj