Why would alleged poor behavior among a handful of YC founders damage its reputation, unless it’s either endorsed by YC leadership or widespread enough that it’s unfortunately representative?

If anything, criticism of poor behavior within the cohort would reflect well on a culture that values sharp contrarian takes and productive disruption.

Or at least, it could...

>At this point in the US, anyone who wanted to get a vaccine can get one.

Pretty sure when this actually happened, vaccines were not actually open to anyone that just wanted one.

that site was well known locally at the time to accept anyone who walked up

Perhaps... But perhaps not everybody was supposed to go walk up in the first place: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520

Bingo. He uses the announcement of vaccines opening up to all in May as "proof" that it was allowed, but I can't see anything in the announcement that indicates that.

> At this point in the US, anyone who wants to get a vaccine can get one. That makes getting it a personal choice.

But since this all happened in March, when not anyone who wanted to get the vaccine could get any, your comment is irrelevant.

"Try to damage Ycombinator"... How?

It's a divisive political topic, and he associated an individual post made on an internal Ycombinator forum with Ycombinator itself. Comments of individuals don't represent the company, and by framing it like he did, he publicly dragged Ycombinator right into the middle of a contentious political debate.

That's like saying students at a university don't represent the university, and yet they do and don't, both in the eyes of the people and the institution. It's difficult to say how attribution will be finally concluded in society, no?

In this case the relationship between member and institution is even tighter, and the desperation of sink or swim is more palpable.

All I've been hearing on HN for the last 6 years is how so many things are inherently political, that to not act is to condone, and that organizations should be made to take a stand by their employees/students/passers-by. Why does YC get an exception?

I don't know how you missed the many comments saying the opposite.

Because we'd have to change bookmarked websites apparently.