Bad takes can be hilarious, though. It's only a problem when the participants and audience aren't chill. Discussions where everyone thinks everyone else is wrong are fun when everyone's chill. I'd wager Redditors might not be the best group of people to have chill conversations with, but it's kind of surprising to me that someone would dismiss HN'ers that easily. But I guess some people just don't appreciate bad takes.

Also, I doubt that most people are going to focus on the pandemic at this point. It depends on where one lives, but even in LA most people have long since moved on from it, and no one wants to hear it at an IRL meetup revival.