I do find it rather hard to make sense of the antagonism here. My only guess is people feel the need to distance themselves from the "sheep" and do so by ridiculing them from their ivory tower. In some cases it's the same thing, but there's a political bent added to it ("some people" from "that side").
They more or less did say that. They said that people are reporting these things but they haven’t detected anything. If you read between the lines, I think they’re insinuating this is mass hysteria but need to continue investigating to be sure.
Sad to see what HN is slowly devolving into.