They're pretty bad comments though. There are three main flavours: 1. The claim that since it's a new method of assessing excess mortality it's no use, and so

They're pretty bad comments though. There are three main flavours: 1. The claim that since it's a new method of assessing excess mortality it's no use, and so "anti-vax propaganda" (despite making no claims along those lines, despite clear descriptions of the method and the reasons for it's use, etc). 2. The claim that since the researchers aren't epidemiologists, we can ignore anything they have to say on the subject of excess mortality, as it applies to an epidemic. The people saying this call the paper nonsensical (I'd call that ironic). 3. The claim that the sanctity and respectability of HN is lessened by having such anti-vax sentiment on the front page (very scientific criticism there). That's it; that's the "explanation" for double flagging a published paper about a statistical method by a dude with 52 publications.