I agree on the hostility, and I also hadn't flagged.

I wanted to see how the post evolved as I read the article and looked into each linked source's motivations, so I made a note of the points (14 after 10 minutes) specifically because I felt there would be a lot of biased discussion.

The instant popularity of the post could have three factors: multiple votes from one source, individuals already well-versed in disease propagation and clandestine government action who support more visibility in the post, and people who believe the post could have merit without actually putting a great deal of their own research into the sources.

I'm in the fourth camp: agnostics. That's why I haven't contributed to the popularity of the post. However, two years of hearing about this disease does a lot to build resent for armchair epidemiologists.

Here's a fourth factor: people upvoting before reading it (but possibly after skimming it or being aware of it's context) in order to keep it highly ranked (which is score + time sensitive) in order to trigger HN discussing the subject. I was in that camp before it got flagged.

I read, had a bunch things to argue about, and came back to find it flagged. IMO it's a terrible blog post and I regret reading it. But man, the flagging was... fast.