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Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

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Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#121

Post by oarsinsync »

ReptileMan wrote: post #97
oarsinsync wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else is Qatar doing? What does Qatar do to a person who is confirmed infected? Does the same action occur to someone with the flu? What is Qatar asking it's population to do differently today, compared to this time a year ago? Does that have any meaningful impact on transmission rates?

It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place. I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.

> > That is not much higher than flu.

> It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place.

The explicit comparison to the flu doesn't really seem to hold, since the conditions applied to the infected aren't equal. If those carrying the flu were subject to the same conditions as those carrying this covid-19, the comparison would hold up a lot better.

> I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.

Mortality numbers as a % of tested peoples are hugely variable due to the differences in testing between nations.

Mortality numbers as a % of the population (deaths per 100k/1m) make for good comparisons, and unless the nation is engaging in outright deception, those numbers are reasonable to use as a comparison.

According to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality the USA has 52.52 deaths per 100k. In line with your previous, Qatar has 6.94 deaths per 100k.

10x more people have died in the USA vs in Qatar. What's going on?

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#122

Post by LegitShady »

ativzzz wrote: post #99
dragosmocrii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks. I also played a couple games of volleyball and tennis, and I'm so clumsy I'm embarrassed I lost control of my body. Meanwhile, thr local gyms havr silly rules to restrict people's access...

You can maintain a very healthy body using only body weight exercises, with practically no weights at all from the comfort of your home. With youtube and the like, you have access to near infinite workouts as well. Not having access to a gym is not a sufficient reason to be out of shape.

Once you start training weighted exercises it's very difficult to get similar workouts with bodyweight. If I'm squatting 250lb it's going to be tough to simulate that with my bodyweight and I'm not likely to be able to load the reps the same way.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#123

Post by adolph »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #45
adolph wrote: post #14

Unlike actual prohibition, the social agreement behind "lockdowns" is subject to time contingencies. The activities considered "essential" grow as time passes. While there are nominal categories of "essential" defined by community/political leaders, that contract depends on agreement. Since each person's conception of "essential" is different, as time passes "essential" grows exponentially instead of linearly.

> the social agreement behind "lockdowns" is subject to time contingencies. like "15 days to slow the spread"?

Yes, say for example few people have 2 weeks of food in their house. That makes the grocery store "essential" during a 15 day period. If the grocery store is essential for the 15 day period then all the activity that goes behind a working grocery store within a 15 day period is essential.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#124

Post by elliekelly »

ativzzz wrote: post #99
dragosmocrii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks. I also played a couple games of volleyball and tennis, and I'm so clumsy I'm embarrassed I lost control of my body. Meanwhile, thr local gyms havr silly rules to restrict people's access...

You can maintain a very healthy body using only body weight exercises, with practically no weights at all from the comfort of your home. With youtube and the like, you have access to near infinite workouts as well. Not having access to a gym is not a sufficient reason to be out of shape.

I recently found r/bodyweightfitness when trying to figure out how the heck to make the first pull-up happen. Tons of helpful information there.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#125

Post by hammock »

juliansimioni wrote: post #95
dragosmocrii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks. I also played a couple games of volleyball and tennis, and I'm so clumsy I'm embarrassed I lost control of my body. Meanwhile, thr local gyms havr silly rules to restrict people's access...

You know what would really cause you to lose muscle? Getting a bad (or even mild) case of COVID. I'm an athlete myself so I get it. Working out is important. But people are reporting that they are not back to 100% even _months_ after the primary symptoms of COVID are gone. And health professionals are saying that it's very possible to lose things like lung capacity PERMANENTLY. Honestly that scares me more than the i…

Do you plan to avoid COVID forever? Do you believe you will never get it? Do you expect to isolate yourself until an effective and reliable vaccine is available to you? How long can you do that for? Are you most concerned with not getting it yourself, or with reducing the overall death count by not overloading the healthcare system?

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#126

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

reaperducer wrote: post #78
dragosmocrii wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks. I also played a couple games of volleyball and tennis, and I'm so clumsy I'm embarrassed I lost control of my body. Meanwhile, thr local gyms havr silly rules to restrict people's access...

The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks. It's not about you. It's about everyone else. How can someone be so selfish and self-absorbed that they think their "muscle mass" is more important than the health of hundreds or thousands of other people? I know this question may violate some HN policy, but I can…

> I know this question may violate some HN policy, but I can't help but ask: What's wrong with you?

There have been times in the past where I've made HN comments that were meant as constructive criticism to another HN user. But my accidental tone ruined any chance of my comment being helpful. @dang was gracious enough to provide me detailed feedback [0], and it seems to be working for me.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24100238

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#127

Post by 52-6F-62 »

three_seagrass wrote: post #60
jcomis wrote: post #3

While trying to buy workout equipment off craig's list I was solicited twice to join "speakeasy" gyms. They had ads for a bunch of gear and when I inquired they sent me a detailed response on working out in their private gym. One was a large neighborhood garage that offered solo time by the hour, one was a shutdown normal gym. Pretty expensive too!

>Pretty expensive too! Dumbbells are going for > $2-3/lb on various websites right now, which is insane. Adjustable dumbbells are going for > $10/lb, which is over twice their usual sticker price. Gyms could lease out their equipment right now and make a killing.

> Gyms could lease out their equipment right now and make a killing.

Many have done just that here in Toronto. The equipment went very fast, though.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#128

Post by vharuck »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #53
Ansil849 wrote: post #29

This seems incredibly dangerous. Are the speakeasy gyms requiring negative COVID tests? Are they doing temperature screenings upon entry? How diligently are they sanitizing equipment? How well ventilated are these various areas? Why are people ignoring all of these risks, what kind of threat model do they have?

I'd guess the threat model is something like: relatively low local disease prevalence rate, the likelihood that infected people show up to workout is lower than other activities like office-work, and relatively low likelihood of personal adverse outcomes in someone healthy enough to be going to an underground gym. Further, there are major benefits to psychological state, social/emotional state, mental acuity, health,…

>I'd love to see you try and add all that up in micromorts of personal risk and show me that it's actually a bad rational decision.

On an individual level, I have no doubt you're right. The health benefits from exercise would definitely outweigh the risk of COVID-19 (assuming the individual's not over 65 or has a majorly risky health condition).

But this is a pandemic, so decisions are made on the community level. The disease spreads. Healthy people don't live in separate cities from those at risk. Even if everyone is careful, mistakes happen: an unexpected sneeze, unconsciously rubbing your eyes, getting caught in a crowd. We're trying to minimize the number of mistakes (especially the more likely ones).

That's not too say whatever policy is current in your area is right. But if you think things can be done safely, consider reaching out to your representatives with a plan backed up by medical research. I know my state desperately wants to reopen businesses; the government doesn't benefit from closures.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#129

Post by bobthepanda »

ls612 wrote: post #94
reaperducer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks. It's not about you. It's about everyone else. How can someone be so selfish and self-absorbed that they think their "muscle mass" is more important than the health of hundreds or thousands of other people? I know this question may violate some HN policy, but I can…

This same argument can be made about any infectious disease season. The only difference is a matter of degree. This virus is probably ~5 times as bad as the flu so we should spend ~5 times as much to mitigate the externalities. Not ~500 times as much like we have. I fear that after this every time there's a bad flu season we will see this same shit again because "think of the most vulnerable among us, you're literall…

no the problem is that severe COVID cases take up space in the hospital for a long time, so it's relatively easy for cases to snowball, people to be unable to admitted into hospitals at capacity, and then for lots more unadmitted people to start dying because they can't get treatment. which is what happened in Wuhan.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#130

Post by juliansimioni »

ReptileMan wrote: post #116
juliansimioni wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would really cause you to lose muscle? Getting a bad (or even mild) case of COVID. I'm an athlete myself so I get it. Working out is important. But people are reporting that they are not back to 100% even _months_ after the primary symptoms of COVID are gone. And health professionals are saying that it's very possible to lose things like lung capacity PERMANENTLY. Honestly that scares me more than the i…

It matters of course how many of how many are reporting that? 1/2 not worth it. 1/1000 - will take my chances. Covid seems to have flipped a switch in people's brains that make every probability 1.

I wouldn't take the 1/1000 chance, but even then. It's not an all or nothing choice.

It's more like:

- X/1000 chance for people who go to the gym, get sick, lose health permanently, probably infect others

- 0/1000 chance of the same if you stay away from the gym and try to do some sort of similar workout at home, even if it's not ideal. Body weight exercises are great by the way

Who cares if X is 1 or 999? Why would anyone choose the first option?

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