It's common for people to feel like there must be brigading when downvotes etc. show up quickly, but a much simpler explanation is that this stuff happens all the time on divisive topics, with no coordination required.
It's also perfectly common for downvoted posts to get upvoted back to positive, as other readers come in. It's actually to be expected for unfairly downvoted posts, since readers will give corrective upvotes regardless of whether they agree or disagree.
If you break the site guidelines, though—which unfortunately you did in this thread, repeatedly—you're going to get downvoted and flagged regardless of whether people agree/disagree or your underlying view is right/wrong.
Of course it's very frustrating to see lots of wrong views, or views you feel are wrong, getting expressed in threads like this. But the site guidelines require all commenters to metabolize that frustration and to remain thoughtful and respectful and substantive in their comments, regardless of how right they are or feel you are.
I know there's volatility in voting, but the tone of discussion and vote patterns early in these discussions do not look at all like what happens later. It seems to happen repeatedly on topics of vaccines: thoughtful pro-vax stuff gets downvoted/gray.
There's one thing I particularly disagree with: I do not think labelling a user that posts large piles of anti-vaccine content as "antivax" is ad-hom.
It's also perfectly common for downvoted posts to get upvoted back to positive, as other readers come in. It's actually to be expected for unfairly downvoted posts, since readers will give corrective upvotes regardless of whether they agree or disagree.
If you break the site guidelines, though—which unfortunately you did in this thread, repeatedly—you're going to get downvoted and flagged regardless of whether people agree/disagree or your underlying view is right/wrong.
Of course it's very frustrating to see lots of wrong views, or views you feel are wrong, getting expressed in threads like this. But the site guidelines require all commenters to metabolize that frustration and to remain thoughtful and respectful and substantive in their comments, regardless of how right they are or feel you are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html