9 ms·

South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

42 points by jbaudanza 5y ago

metalliqaz 5y ago
They are limiting pretty much all high-intensity exercise in an attempt to prevent the spread by way of heavy breathing. Sure, the headline sounds ridiculous to my American ears, but I wonder if there is a cultural-specific reason for the music. For example, perhaps synchronized dance is an extremely common exercise class in Korea.
- daveslash 5y ago
  I understand the intent, but if it's too risky to be in a gym with people working out in sync with 120bpm, then my personal risk assessment would say it's too risky to be in the gym, period. I wouldn't feel any better just because the music was 90bpm. Edit: Then again, humans are notoriously bad at evaluating risk, so I may be way off base. :-)
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    FWIW, I went for a heart checkup at the hospital recently. They were doing ECGs as normal, but they weren't doing ECGs-while-exercising due to covid risk. I think the difference between regular breathing and hard breathing due to intense exercise may be significant. My personal take on gyms would be that well ventilated ones are likely quite safe, but the most are probably not sufficiently well ventilated.
    - fy20 5y ago
      If anything I'd expect gyms to be better ventilated than offices or supermarkets. I'd imagine smelling of stale body odour isn't a great selling point for most gyms (maybe the more hardcore gyms it is?), and there's no way they are going to keep that out without decent ventilation.
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        > If anything I'd expect gyms to be better ventilated than offices or supermarkets I certainly wouldn't be at all surprised if gyms ended up being safer than offices and supermarkets. Offices in particular (where one typically spends hours in the same room) seem pretty unsafe to me.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        My gym is in a converted warehouse. Probably 30' ceiling at least, so it's mostly open air. Lots of fans and HVAC so the air is constantly moving. It was closed from March - June of 2020. Reopened in late June with masking and social distancing as per local rules. There was an exception to the masking rule "while exercising" so basically nobody wore a mask in the gym. I returned to my every other day habit, my workout takes about 90 minutes and then I sit in the sauna for 20 minutes and then shower. I'm not aware of any local cases linked specifically to gyms, so it seemed to work out fine.
- taurath 5y ago
  I’ll offer a potential explanation - they may have had outbreaks specifically around high effort fitness spinning classes but they wish to keep the gyms open for older people and people with disabilities for whom it’s their only exercise. It’s cutting quite a line for sure but often there is a very specific context for rules like this - think about all those times when you’ve had to go “what happened for them to have to put this sign up”
  - glennvtx 5y ago
    It doesn't really matter what their justification might be, Threats of violence against people for listening to music is a trespass of basic human rights.
    - metalliqaz 5y ago
      but that's not what it is. It's not a prohibition against music, it's prohibition against group classes set to that music. I presume anyone can listen to any music they please in private.
      - glennvtx 5y ago
        Semantics. Do you have a right to threaten a group of people voluntarily exercising together? Of course not. Since you do not have that right, You cannot delegate that right to another, which makes any claims of "democratically" derived law, invalid.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  One of the first surprising cases I remember in the US was a Washington-based church choir singing while following all concurrently enforced precautions. I don’t expect they were doing intense dances or movements at rehearsals. The danger is simply prolonged exposure in spaces with low air flow. Edit: I’m not a doctor, I could be wrong.
blakesterz 5y ago
The actual title of the article: Say goodbye to Gangnam Style, treadmill running for next 2 weeks: Some Level 4 distancing rules being called ‘illogical, nonsensical’ "Under Level 4 rules, taking showers within fitness club premises is prohibited and only a limited number of users are allowed in each area at a time. At the same time, the running speed on treadmills is capped at 6 kilometers per hour. Music played at group exercise classes at fitness clubs cannot exceed 120 beats per minute."
- halfdan 5y ago
  6 kilometers per hour is a fast walk. That's wild.
  - lampington 5y ago
    It's possible to jog at that speed if you try hard - I've been doing some low heart rate training recently and can get down to 11m/km while still jogging, and I'm pretty tall so the biomechanics are weird. It does look ridiculous, though!
- agubelu 5y ago
  That's crazy. Are they going to limit the amount of weight you can lift as well?
BitwiseFool 5y ago
"Free Democracies" are passing the weirdest restrictions. It's mind boggling just how much power our governments are allowed to wield. I'm not even a libertarian and I think this is government overreach. So you're going to allow people to work out in gyms, but playing music that's too fast is somehow too dangerous to allow? Come on. If it was a real problem you'd just close the gyms again.
- nszceta 5y ago
  A sizable portion of South Koreans still believe in fan death.
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    I had to look this up as I'd never heard of it before. I don't even know what this makes me more of- sad, or impressed they pulled this off.
- 015a 5y ago
  This is what we call "compromise"; when you've got a reasonable position on one side, a reasonable position on the other, and the solution is to meet in the middle and produce policy which is totally unreasonable and makes no one happy.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    Or, you have a reasonable policy on one side, and a batshit crazy policy on the other, so the "compromise" is a half-way batshit crazy policy.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    This reminds me of how grocery stores were allowed to remain open, but the greeting card aisle was taped off because they didn't want people going to birthday parties. It felt like insanity, what if I wanted to send a card in-lieu of going to a gathering? Didn't matter. They weren't going to sell me one.
nkozyra 5y ago
Excuse me while I quickly remix every top-40 120+bpm track to 119.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  Ever heard of Chopped and Screwed? That, but for dance music.
  - ggsp 5y ago
    Moombahton?
- kube-system 5y ago
  ~~Gangnam~~ Pyongyang style.
gotoeleven 5y ago
costco has removed relish from their hot dog condiment dispensers .. to fight covid I hear california is considering banning birthday cakes with more than 5 candles because the wind to blow them out can spread covid
- eappleby 5y ago
  https://www.today.com/food/it-safe-blow-out-birthday-candles-here-s-what-experts-t196973 https://www.today.com/food/it-safe-blow-out-birthday-candles...
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  Some of the covid cost cutting takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to justify. But really it's just cost cutting.
  - sschueller 5y ago
    Isn't relish like the third most popular condiment on a hot dog? I guess the profit margin isn't as crazy as it is with ketchup and mustard.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Does costco profit on their hot dogs? I thought the snack bar was all loss-leader. https://thetakeout.com/costco-loses-money-every-time-it-sells-a-1-50-hot-dog-1825177950 https://thetakeout.com/costco-loses-money-every-time-it-sell...
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  My town is ripping up the municipal flower beds on the sides of roads because sneezes (due to pollen allergies) can carry COVID.
bluescrn 5y ago
"No, the BPM is actually really low, it was written using demi-semi-hemi-demi-semiquavers"
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  I was thinking this also. Is it half notes at 200 bpm, or quarter notes at 100?
  - oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
    Since most mainstream songs these days have a distinct beat, does that even matter? You just count how many beats you hear in a minute.
briefcomment 5y ago
I was curious what the vaccination rate was in South Korea, and was surprised to see that their first-vaccination rate was below 30% just two weeks ago [1]. [1] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccination-rate-nears-30-amid-delta-variant-concerns https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccinatio...
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  Paradoxical but not really surprising, because the countries in desperate need of vaccination are those hit hard by COVID-19 anyway. SK vaccination rate has been comparably slower than some other countries but still in accordance with the goverment's original plan: it went from 7% to ~30% over the course of a single month of June for example.
  - sugardough 5y ago
    They used up all the stock for the second shot for initial dose to inflate the numbers and hit the goal. We're short on vaccines, which is why the number of people fully vaccinated has stagnated for weeks since June.
    - lifthrasiir 5y ago
      > They used up all the stock for the second shot for initial dose to inflate the numbers and hit the goal. They are not inflating the numbers, just fulfilling their own promises. The government was pretty much clear in its original plan that it will be initial doses. Initial doses alone do have a positive effect on the reproduction number so this is to be expected. > We're short on vaccines, which is why the number of people fully vaccinated has stagnated for weeks since June. If you've got paid and paid your rent in the same week you are not short on money (at least in the common sense), just that your expense is not uniform across weeks. The governmental vaccination plan has been very much non-uniform, partly exaggerated by the fact that SK has a very strong vaccine supply chain and everyone seemingly wants to be vaccinated given a chance.
hntrowaway837 5y ago
South Korea has had 2044 deaths, out of 51.7 million people. That's a death rate surely under the usual "flu and pneumonia" rate. I don't understand, I really don't. I anybody can explain, I'd very much appreciate.
- dubcanada 5y ago
  It's preventative rather then after the fact. Also covid restrictions do wonders for flu prevention!
- kube-system 5y ago
  There is absolutely no question that SK's strict prevention measures are the cause of that. They were very strict from day one, no doubt because they were hit hard by SARS-CoV-1.
  - hntrowaway837 5y ago
    Really? "no question"? Aren't they also much healthier than, for instance, Americans? 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic, so I've heard recently.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Yes. To determine this, look at the total infection rate as well. South Korea is 329.92 per 100,000 people California is 9,712.28 per 100,000 people France is 9,002.09 per 100,000 people England is 8,004.18 per 100,000 people Finland is 1,772.60 per 100,000 people Taiwan, which also was hit hard by SARS... 64.13 per 100,000 people. These people have already been through respiratory epidemics in their lifetime, and they were prepared.
      - hntrowaway837 5y ago
        The infection rate is also commensurate with general immune system fitness. Remember in bad covid what we observe is vascular system failure, and we know that chronic hyperglycemia damages blood vessels. Combine that with non functional immune systems and this is what you get.
colordrops 5y ago
I'm glad we are finally at a point where that skepticism around strict covid policies, such as in this thread, can be expressed without being immediately attacked. Questioning anything 6 months ago would have gotten you shut down or banned, depending on the forum.
- iaHN 5y ago
  I don't know about that. I received some negative comments recently for asking for evidence that wearing a mask, while outdoors, while socially distanced was ever effective. People still have their egos and identities attached to this, seeing disagreement as a personal or political attack.
  - samatman 5y ago
    Well, it wasn't. It's going to take awhile for people to go through all the stages of grief about how ineffective and intrusive many of the state interventions during this pandemic really were. Judging by the number of young, healthy, vaccinated people I still see outdoors in masks, it's still denial for a lot of them.
    - codezero 5y ago
      What's the downside for those people who choose to wear a mask outdoors? Perhaps they just came from somewhere indoors and want to have an extra barrier to protect them from unconsciously touching their face. The reason doesn't really matter.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Come on. Every COVID-related thread throughout the last year here has been absolutely crawling with deniers, misinformation, conspiracy theories, rants about freedom, anti-vaxism, you name it--basically everything that you wrap up in that "skepticism" euphemism. I can tell you how trying to combat all this garbage has been: Both sides got the roller-coaster of up and down votes. It's just absurdly politically charged. In this case, the authorities clearly acknowledging the difficulty for businesses, looking for tradeoffs, trying to keep them open while making compromises to at least reduce the risk. But no... Even that's not enough! Everything is black-and-white now: You either have zero restrictions or it's authoritarian overreach.
throwawaysea 5y ago
If this isn’t illustrative of the tradeoff between freedom/individual liberties and overbearing government imposed restrictions, I don’t know what is. This particular type of restriction ends up being acceptable to some because they aren’t the ones losing out on a freedom they exercise, while others feel like they’re losing more relative to others - it’s a classic tyranny of the majority. We have a solution for all of this - it is to educate people but let people do what they want. Those who think the risks are too great should constrain their own lives, instead of demanding that everyone else change all of society to create an acceptable risk profile for those who are risk-averse.
- clairity 5y ago
  > "...educate people but let people do what they want. Those who think the risks are too great should constrain their own lives, instead of demanding that everyone else change all of society to create an acceptable risk profile for those who are risk-averse." yes please. meanwhile in LA, at least half the people are still wearing masks outside. whatever floats your boat, but i can't help but shake my head each time. if folks really wanted the mask for more than performative reasons, they'd wear it at home and at friends homes. how many maskers actually did that? probably less than 1%, even though that's where it would have the most effect. waiting for that study, though i don't have high hopes since it'd counter the prevailing mediopolitical narrative.
sugardough 5y ago
South Korean here and I just wanted to add some thoughts. The real reasoning for the ridiculous ban is because they've been shutting down the gyms whenever the numbers spike but can't anymore because the business owners are in a desperate state because of the prolonged shutdowns. So it's their way of saying please don't to the gyms while avoiding a total outlash from the gym owners. Obviously how well we're managing the pandemic while protecting civil liberty and privacy is a hot political discussion. We managed to keep things mostly under control and prevented total medical system collapse and kept the mortality rate low, while on the other side we didn't put nearly as enough resources into securing the vaccines so we're paying the price now.
- hntrowaway837 5y ago
  Out of 51.7 million people, SK has had about 2000 covid deaths. How could SK have been anywhere near "total medical system collapse"?!
  - sugardough 5y ago
    When the hospitals run out of beds, it's a collapse in the system. It's not a "total medical system collapse" since it lasted a day or two and the number of people affected was small (probably around 10-100), but the situation could have easily been worse and we would have had one like new york last year.
  - yongjik 5y ago
    You've probably heard of the parable of weeds growing on the lake. Every day it doubles, filling the lake in sixty days. When is the lake half full? At the fifty-ninth day. SK is having >1k new patients per day now - an exponential growth means you're much closer to "total medical system collapse" than it seems.
    - hntrowaway837 5y ago
      You don't know what room this exponential growth has. It could near saturation, at we've often seen.
Black101 5y ago
lol... I wonder if they have less crazy laws in North Korea...
dzhiurgis 5y ago
Why gyms have music to begin with? 90% people using their headphones anyway! External music is super annoying if you try to listen to audiobook.
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  The article is oblivious of the context that this provision only applies to group exercises.

42 points by jbaudanza 5y ago

They are limiting pretty much all high-intensity exercise in an attempt to prevent the spread by way of heavy breathing. Sure, the headline sounds ridiculous to my American ears, but I wonder if there is a cultural-specific reason for the music. For example, perhaps synchronized dance is an extremely common exercise class in Korea.

daveslash 5y ago
I understand the intent, but if it's too risky to be in a gym with people working out in sync with 120bpm, then my personal risk assessment would say it's too risky to be in the gym, period. I wouldn't feel any better just because the music was 90bpm. Edit: Then again, humans are notoriously bad at evaluating risk, so I may be way off base. :-)
- nicoburns 5y ago
  FWIW, I went for a heart checkup at the hospital recently. They were doing ECGs as normal, but they weren't doing ECGs-while-exercising due to covid risk. I think the difference between regular breathing and hard breathing due to intense exercise may be significant. My personal take on gyms would be that well ventilated ones are likely quite safe, but the most are probably not sufficiently well ventilated.
  - fy20 5y ago
    If anything I'd expect gyms to be better ventilated than offices or supermarkets. I'd imagine smelling of stale body odour isn't a great selling point for most gyms (maybe the more hardcore gyms it is?), and there's no way they are going to keep that out without decent ventilation.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      > If anything I'd expect gyms to be better ventilated than offices or supermarkets I certainly wouldn't be at all surprised if gyms ended up being safer than offices and supermarkets. Offices in particular (where one typically spends hours in the same room) seem pretty unsafe to me.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      My gym is in a converted warehouse. Probably 30' ceiling at least, so it's mostly open air. Lots of fans and HVAC so the air is constantly moving. It was closed from March - June of 2020. Reopened in late June with masking and social distancing as per local rules. There was an exception to the masking rule "while exercising" so basically nobody wore a mask in the gym. I returned to my every other day habit, my workout takes about 90 minutes and then I sit in the sauna for 20 minutes and then shower. I'm not aware of any local cases linked specifically to gyms, so it seemed to work out fine.
taurath 5y ago
I’ll offer a potential explanation - they may have had outbreaks specifically around high effort fitness spinning classes but they wish to keep the gyms open for older people and people with disabilities for whom it’s their only exercise. It’s cutting quite a line for sure but often there is a very specific context for rules like this - think about all those times when you’ve had to go “what happened for them to have to put this sign up”
- glennvtx 5y ago
  It doesn't really matter what their justification might be, Threats of violence against people for listening to music is a trespass of basic human rights.
  - metalliqaz 5y ago
    but that's not what it is. It's not a prohibition against music, it's prohibition against group classes set to that music. I presume anyone can listen to any music they please in private.
    - glennvtx 5y ago
      Semantics. Do you have a right to threaten a group of people voluntarily exercising together? Of course not. Since you do not have that right, You cannot delegate that right to another, which makes any claims of "democratically" derived law, invalid.
t-writescode 5y ago
One of the first surprising cases I remember in the US was a Washington-based church choir singing while following all concurrently enforced precautions. I don’t expect they were doing intense dances or movements at rehearsals. The danger is simply prolonged exposure in spaces with low air flow. Edit: I’m not a doctor, I could be wrong.

blakesterz 5y ago

The actual title of the article: Say goodbye to Gangnam Style, treadmill running for next 2 weeks: Some Level 4 distancing rules being called ‘illogical, nonsensical’ "Under Level 4 rules, taking showers within fitness club premises is prohibited and only a limited number of users are allowed in each area at a time. At the same time, the running speed on treadmills is capped at 6 kilometers per hour. Music played at group exercise classes at fitness clubs cannot exceed 120 beats per minute."

halfdan 5y ago
6 kilometers per hour is a fast walk. That's wild.
- lampington 5y ago
  It's possible to jog at that speed if you try hard - I've been doing some low heart rate training recently and can get down to 11m/km while still jogging, and I'm pretty tall so the biomechanics are weird. It does look ridiculous, though!
agubelu 5y ago
That's crazy. Are they going to limit the amount of weight you can lift as well?

BitwiseFool 5y ago

"Free Democracies" are passing the weirdest restrictions. It's mind boggling just how much power our governments are allowed to wield. I'm not even a libertarian and I think this is government overreach. So you're going to allow people to work out in gyms, but playing music that's too fast is somehow too dangerous to allow? Come on. If it was a real problem you'd just close the gyms again.

nszceta 5y ago
A sizable portion of South Koreans still believe in fan death.
- effingwewt 5y ago
  I had to look this up as I'd never heard of it before. I don't even know what this makes me more of- sad, or impressed they pulled this off.
015a 5y ago
This is what we call "compromise"; when you've got a reasonable position on one side, a reasonable position on the other, and the solution is to meet in the middle and produce policy which is totally unreasonable and makes no one happy.
- thrower123 5y ago
  Or, you have a reasonable policy on one side, and a batshit crazy policy on the other, so the "compromise" is a half-way batshit crazy policy.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  This reminds me of how grocery stores were allowed to remain open, but the greeting card aisle was taped off because they didn't want people going to birthday parties. It felt like insanity, what if I wanted to send a card in-lieu of going to a gathering? Didn't matter. They weren't going to sell me one.

nkozyra 5y ago

Excuse me while I quickly remix every top-40 120+bpm track to 119.

nielsbot 5y ago
Ever heard of Chopped and Screwed? That, but for dance music.
- ggsp 5y ago
  Moombahton?
kube-system 5y ago
~~Gangnam~~ Pyongyang style.

gotoeleven 5y ago

costco has removed relish from their hot dog condiment dispensers .. to fight covid I hear california is considering banning birthday cakes with more than 5 candles because the wind to blow them out can spread covid

eappleby 5y ago
https://www.today.com/food/it-safe-blow-out-birthday-candles-here-s-what-experts-t196973 https://www.today.com/food/it-safe-blow-out-birthday-candles...
aunty_helen 5y ago
Some of the covid cost cutting takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to justify. But really it's just cost cutting.
- sschueller 5y ago
  Isn't relish like the third most popular condiment on a hot dog? I guess the profit margin isn't as crazy as it is with ketchup and mustard.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Does costco profit on their hot dogs? I thought the snack bar was all loss-leader. https://thetakeout.com/costco-loses-money-every-time-it-sells-a-1-50-hot-dog-1825177950 https://thetakeout.com/costco-loses-money-every-time-it-sell...
phendrenad2 5y ago
My town is ripping up the municipal flower beds on the sides of roads because sneezes (due to pollen allergies) can carry COVID.

bluescrn 5y ago

"No, the BPM is actually really low, it was written using demi-semi-hemi-demi-semiquavers"

colejohnson66 5y ago
I was thinking this also. Is it half notes at 200 bpm, or quarter notes at 100?
- oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
  Since most mainstream songs these days have a distinct beat, does that even matter? You just count how many beats you hear in a minute.

briefcomment 5y ago

I was curious what the vaccination rate was in South Korea, and was surprised to see that their first-vaccination rate was below 30% just two weeks ago [1]. [1] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccination-rate-nears-30-amid-delta-variant-concerns https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccinatio...

lifthrasiir 5y ago
Paradoxical but not really surprising, because the countries in desperate need of vaccination are those hit hard by COVID-19 anyway. SK vaccination rate has been comparably slower than some other countries but still in accordance with the goverment's original plan: it went from 7% to ~30% over the course of a single month of June for example.
- sugardough 5y ago
  They used up all the stock for the second shot for initial dose to inflate the numbers and hit the goal. We're short on vaccines, which is why the number of people fully vaccinated has stagnated for weeks since June.
  - lifthrasiir 5y ago
    > They used up all the stock for the second shot for initial dose to inflate the numbers and hit the goal. They are not inflating the numbers, just fulfilling their own promises. The government was pretty much clear in its original plan that it will be initial doses. Initial doses alone do have a positive effect on the reproduction number so this is to be expected. > We're short on vaccines, which is why the number of people fully vaccinated has stagnated for weeks since June. If you've got paid and paid your rent in the same week you are not short on money (at least in the common sense), just that your expense is not uniform across weeks. The governmental vaccination plan has been very much non-uniform, partly exaggerated by the fact that SK has a very strong vaccine supply chain and everyone seemingly wants to be vaccinated given a chance.

hntrowaway837 5y ago

South Korea has had 2044 deaths, out of 51.7 million people. That's a death rate surely under the usual "flu and pneumonia" rate. I don't understand, I really don't. I anybody can explain, I'd very much appreciate.

dubcanada 5y ago
It's preventative rather then after the fact. Also covid restrictions do wonders for flu prevention!
kube-system 5y ago
There is absolutely no question that SK's strict prevention measures are the cause of that. They were very strict from day one, no doubt because they were hit hard by SARS-CoV-1.
- hntrowaway837 5y ago
  Really? "no question"? Aren't they also much healthier than, for instance, Americans? 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic, so I've heard recently.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Yes. To determine this, look at the total infection rate as well. South Korea is 329.92 per 100,000 people California is 9,712.28 per 100,000 people France is 9,002.09 per 100,000 people England is 8,004.18 per 100,000 people Finland is 1,772.60 per 100,000 people Taiwan, which also was hit hard by SARS... 64.13 per 100,000 people. These people have already been through respiratory epidemics in their lifetime, and they were prepared.
    - hntrowaway837 5y ago
      The infection rate is also commensurate with general immune system fitness. Remember in bad covid what we observe is vascular system failure, and we know that chronic hyperglycemia damages blood vessels. Combine that with non functional immune systems and this is what you get.

colordrops 5y ago

I'm glad we are finally at a point where that skepticism around strict covid policies, such as in this thread, can be expressed without being immediately attacked. Questioning anything 6 months ago would have gotten you shut down or banned, depending on the forum.

iaHN 5y ago
I don't know about that. I received some negative comments recently for asking for evidence that wearing a mask, while outdoors, while socially distanced was ever effective. People still have their egos and identities attached to this, seeing disagreement as a personal or political attack.
- samatman 5y ago
  Well, it wasn't. It's going to take awhile for people to go through all the stages of grief about how ineffective and intrusive many of the state interventions during this pandemic really were. Judging by the number of young, healthy, vaccinated people I still see outdoors in masks, it's still denial for a lot of them.
  - codezero 5y ago
    What's the downside for those people who choose to wear a mask outdoors? Perhaps they just came from somewhere indoors and want to have an extra barrier to protect them from unconsciously touching their face. The reason doesn't really matter.
ryandrake 5y ago
Come on. Every COVID-related thread throughout the last year here has been absolutely crawling with deniers, misinformation, conspiracy theories, rants about freedom, anti-vaxism, you name it--basically everything that you wrap up in that "skepticism" euphemism. I can tell you how trying to combat all this garbage has been: Both sides got the roller-coaster of up and down votes. It's just absurdly politically charged. In this case, the authorities clearly acknowledging the difficulty for businesses, looking for tradeoffs, trying to keep them open while making compromises to at least reduce the risk. But no... Even that's not enough! Everything is black-and-white now: You either have zero restrictions or it's authoritarian overreach.

throwawaysea 5y ago

If this isn’t illustrative of the tradeoff between freedom/individual liberties and overbearing government imposed restrictions, I don’t know what is. This particular type of restriction ends up being acceptable to some because they aren’t the ones losing out on a freedom they exercise, while others feel like they’re losing more relative to others - it’s a classic tyranny of the majority. We have a solution for all of this - it is to educate people but let people do what they want. Those who think the risks are too great should constrain their own lives, instead of demanding that everyone else change all of society to create an acceptable risk profile for those who are risk-averse.

clairity 5y ago
> "...educate people but let people do what they want. Those who think the risks are too great should constrain their own lives, instead of demanding that everyone else change all of society to create an acceptable risk profile for those who are risk-averse." yes please. meanwhile in LA, at least half the people are still wearing masks outside. whatever floats your boat, but i can't help but shake my head each time. if folks really wanted the mask for more than performative reasons, they'd wear it at home and at friends homes. how many maskers actually did that? probably less than 1%, even though that's where it would have the most effect. waiting for that study, though i don't have high hopes since it'd counter the prevailing mediopolitical narrative.

sugardough 5y ago

South Korean here and I just wanted to add some thoughts. The real reasoning for the ridiculous ban is because they've been shutting down the gyms whenever the numbers spike but can't anymore because the business owners are in a desperate state because of the prolonged shutdowns. So it's their way of saying please don't to the gyms while avoiding a total outlash from the gym owners. Obviously how well we're managing the pandemic while protecting civil liberty and privacy is a hot political discussion. We managed to keep things mostly under control and prevented total medical system collapse and kept the mortality rate low, while on the other side we didn't put nearly as enough resources into securing the vaccines so we're paying the price now.

hntrowaway837 5y ago
Out of 51.7 million people, SK has had about 2000 covid deaths. How could SK have been anywhere near "total medical system collapse"?!
- sugardough 5y ago
  When the hospitals run out of beds, it's a collapse in the system. It's not a "total medical system collapse" since it lasted a day or two and the number of people affected was small (probably around 10-100), but the situation could have easily been worse and we would have had one like new york last year.
- yongjik 5y ago
  You've probably heard of the parable of weeds growing on the lake. Every day it doubles, filling the lake in sixty days. When is the lake half full? At the fifty-ninth day. SK is having >1k new patients per day now - an exponential growth means you're much closer to "total medical system collapse" than it seems.
  - hntrowaway837 5y ago
    You don't know what room this exponential growth has. It could near saturation, at we've often seen.

Black101 5y ago

lol... I wonder if they have less crazy laws in North Korea...

dzhiurgis 5y ago

Why gyms have music to begin with? 90% people using their headphones anyway! External music is super annoying if you try to listen to audiobook.

lifthrasiir 5y ago
The article is oblivious of the context that this provision only applies to group exercises.