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Virology Down Under
Personal blog · virologydownunder.comsciencehealth
Virology Down Under is a personal blog at virologydownunder.com about science and health. Since 2020, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its COVID-19 explainers on pandemic preparation, early warnings and PCR false positives. One commenter found a pandemic-preparation post useful.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Facts, data, info, expert opinion and a reasonable, occasionally grumpy, voice on viruses: what they are, how they tick and the illnesses they may cause.
Most-linked posts?
- Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-02-23
- So you think you’re about to be in a pandemic?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-02-25
What Hacker News says?
Two sources I've been reading on the endgame here: (1) Circuit-breaker criteria for interventions (vax mandates, mask mandates, indoor gathering restrictions, etc): https://alexanderjxchen.github.io/circuitbreaker/ This chart has helped me understand how public-health entities could explain future interventions. The major issue it illustrates is the choices of the voluntarily unvaccinated can affect everyone by clog…
Comment linking /the-swiss-cheese-infographic-that-went-viral/
on “More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’”Submitted Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now as a story · 290 points
HN discussionI found this post useful "So you think you’re about to be in a pandemic?" : https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be...
Comment linking /so-you-think-youve-about-to-be-in-a-pandemic/
on “Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?”Submitted So you think you’re about to be in a pandemic? as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Panic and hysteria should be avoided by being transparent, not by playing down the dangers or praising the efforts of an intransparent self-serving regime as the WHO has done from very early on. Yes. And the way to avoid it is to switch communication strategies to inform the public without inciting panic. Also to recruit people into being part of the solution at the local level. This could just mean signing up to…
Comment linking /past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/
on “Iran lawmaker says 50 dead from coronavirus in city of Qom”Submitted So you think you’re about to be in a pandemic? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI was more or less convinced by the discussion in mid-February at https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-i... and https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be... that there was a reasonable chance of needing to take some modest steps to prepare for a pandemic. The predictions in these blog posts about pandemic best practices were in retrospect fairly accurate (see e.g. discussion…
Comment linking /so-you-think-youve-about-to-be-in-a-pandemic/
on “A Failure, but Not of Prediction”Submitted Putting PCR into Real-Time as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI sent a similar text to a medically vulnerable friend on Jan 25 saying I thought it was "scary, but not the scariest thing in the world right now", despite having spent some time working with an epidemiology research group. In hindsight, I knew enough to take the risk much more seriously. This article: https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-i... , plus the rising mortality numbers, spurred me to…
Comment linking /past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/
on “On “Armchair Epidemiology””Some were sounding reasonably early warnings, https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-i...
Comment linking /past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/
on “On “Armchair Epidemiology””> Right now most tests are using over 40 cycles This is misleading. The number of cycles used is irrelevant. Reference: https://virologydownunder.com/the-false-positive-pcr-problem... (from someone who has actually used PCR in research, as neither you nor I have). > and it's causing a lot of false positives. We can get an upper bound on false positives from ONS surveys over the summer, by assuming all their positive…
Comment linking /the-false-positive-pcr-problem-is-not-a-problem/
on “Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge”