Comment by snowwrestler

COVID stories are dreadful because there is a very low average level of applicable domain knowledge for COVID discussions.

In plain English, not enough people actually know what they are talking about to create an informative and educational discussion. So they all just end up as a pointless exercise in all the worst aspects of forum flame wars.

HN is at its best when people with lots of relevant experience and knowledge come into the discussion. Then the rest of us can learn new facts, tools, perspectives, etc.

There’s a long list of topics where that is just not available in the existing audience. So there are a lot of topics that, while interesting, are just not a good investment of everyone’s time here.