The comment came from a banned account whose comments are dead by default and need to be vouched. Discussing that is as off-topic as discussing voting, and not surprisingly it’s just noise now.
HN is an anti-MS echo chamber, so comments like this become popular quickly. It's been this way for a few years now.
Which is probably why it’s so high up, because the HN algorithm probably can’t distinguish between replies agreeing with or disagreeing with a parent comment.
Another plausible explanation, at least in my humble opinion, but one without evidence either: Everybody and their kids (for school) were using some kind of video conferencing software for the first time in this kind of professional/educational setting and Zoom led the pack, which led to more interest by white hat researchers (and probably blackhats) as well as journalists. This newfound scrutiny lead to some first stories, and then people kept digging, because "Man exposes himself in virtual class room"[0] or "Does China spy on your business" or "New security problem uncovered. Is your kid safe in the virtual class room?" kind of stories generate a lot of impressions, and zoom had a lot of problems to uncover. Maybe it took some time to uncover the various problems, leading to a continuous stream of stories, maybe some outlets delayed publishing some stories, so they could milk a story at a time before coming out with the next one. Maybe Microsoft tried to capitalize on it, but that doesn't mean they were driving the news.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-55998557