No, as you can see from the great absence of interest in that story and several others around the time, HN was not early and is generally not good at reporting this kind of thing promptly - doesn't have many sources in that area or with that expertise. HN is OK at analysis later, though
Yes, and that story even included very strong HN-bait like drones and surveillance! But still almost nobody was interested.
If OP is looking for early comments on the start of the pandemic from something similar to the HN community, then this one at ArsTechnica is good (Jan 9, 2020):
3 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 19.7 ms ] threadNo, as you can see from the great absence of interest in that story and several others around the time, HN was not early and is generally not good at reporting this kind of thing promptly - doesn't have many sources in that area or with that expertise. HN is OK at analysis later, though
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1578600000&dateRange=custom&...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22218495
If OP is looking for early comments on the start of the pandemic from something similar to the HN community, then this one at ArsTechnica is good (Jan 9, 2020):
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/never-before-seen-vi...
That story also was submitted to HN, but ignored: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996996