Is this surprising? I'm pretty sure that any HN story about "x increases risk of y", where x is a popular activity or consumption item, is going to have a flood of people justifying their partaking in x.

As long as the risks of x are acknowledged, people can make their own choice as to whether they confer enough benefit from x to accept the y level of risk.

It'd be dishonest to pretend that alcohol doesn't have any benefits (social or otherwise). After all, it's been used for millennia. We can argue about whether those benefits outweigh the risks, especially as we learn more about what the risks are (i.e. like we did with tobacco). But I don't think it's particularly surprising or amusing. I'm sure you could name an activity in your life that has some amount of risk that you still choose to partake in because you gain benefit from it (and perhaps be inclined to comment on a story about it too - but I could be wrong).