Welcome to HN! I'm not an expert on the subject, nor am I anybody important here, but give it time. Sometimes downvotes are accidental, sometimes it takes a while for a refutation to make it clear what was wrong, sometimes you just never find out. Best to just take it in stride as something random until more information is available.
You can add a blurb about your credentials to help with down votes. For example, lead with "I have a PhD in <subject>" when your creds are applicable to the case you're trying to make.
Also, votes are just fake internet points. No need to worry about them too much :)
The drive by downvoting is out of control. I wish they changed it from a threshold of 500 to a threshold of 500 and you’re only allowed to downvote accounts that came after you until you get to like 2000 points or something like that.
Basically we need a mechanism to mitigate the impact of eternal September. There are too many new people with downvote ability changing the culture here for the worse. What’s insane is the number of times I see people downvoted for simply asking for sources/citations/references/ evidence/etc.
I would suggest that any down or up votes must be accompanied with a reason and reply then, yes? Or maybe just get rid of the voting and let the comments speak for themselves.
Drive-by downvoting of quality or interesting comments usually are offset by upvotes in any marginally popular post. Don't worry about it. Points here mean much less than they do on sites like Stack Overflow and Reddit.
In terms of the type of behaviour that should be encouraged on YC.. celebrating a diversity of understanding, belief and practice should be OK in a community of individuals wanting to build things that are different.
podgaj - have you checked out https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/? It a well moderated discussion thread focused solely on the science. You will find it a little saner there.
Sorry I am old and new to Hacker News but I have a Phd. Am I doing something wrong?