There are no post downvotes on HN for a reason (or at least normal users dont have them) - flag doesn't and shouldn't mean the same thing as a downvote.
I don’t flag things often, as one might downvote a comment they disagree with. The flag mechanism is for off-topic or spam content, and I consider this way off-topic for this site. There have already been hundreds of published articles about this virus, and if I was interested in seeing them, I would use a site like PubMed to see them.