Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#421

Post by eric_b » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #412

polote wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the issue. Best case in term of covid related death is to keep everyone at home, no freedom and get food delivery directly at the door Worst case, is to do as nothing happened There are a spectrum of possible responses. But we have to accept that some people are going to die if we want other to live. Each group can put the cursor where it wants, but you can't have, no death and complete freedom. Some peop…

This post highlights my favorite part of the keep everyone home argument: "get food delivery directly at the door." Who delivers the food if we keep everyone home? There is a subtle classist underpinning to the entire "Stay The Fuck Home" message which really shows how little people value others, especially lower-class (food delivery) or blue collar (food supply) workers. Everyone needs to stay home, except for the d…

Yes. A thousand times this. I get so tired of the "stay at home" people ranting from their positions of work-from-home high-income privilege.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#422

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #412

polote wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the issue. Best case in term of covid related death is to keep everyone at home, no freedom and get food delivery directly at the door Worst case, is to do as nothing happened There are a spectrum of possible responses. But we have to accept that some people are going to die if we want other to live. Each group can put the cursor where it wants, but you can't have, no death and complete freedom. Some peop…

This post highlights my favorite part of the keep everyone home argument: "get food delivery directly at the door." Who delivers the food if we keep everyone home? There is a subtle classist underpinning to the entire "Stay The Fuck Home" message which really shows how little people value others, especially lower-class (food delivery) or blue collar (food supply) workers. Everyone needs to stay home, except for the d…

Delivery and food prep are far lower-exposure activities than indoor sit-in full-service dining.

People do need to eat. They don't necessarily require takeaway, but on a balance of risks this isn't unreasonable.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#423

Post by smohare » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

andrelayer wrote: post #332

I think a lot of people in this discussion are pitting the argument at people prioritizing their individual choices over the collective health of the community. I think that is a very singular framing from one side. A lot of people I know just believe that the virus itself is not as deadly as the reaction warrants. The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn't nothing and…

Focusing on the death rate as a singular statistic is highly flawed. It’s akin to not taking into account health externalities when discussing the coast of energy sources.

COVID-19 has pretty severe morbidity that make it absolutely nothing like the flu. Some afflicted with severe cases will require months of rehabilitation (never mind working as usual) and probably suffer lifelong complications.

Moreover, it’s the hubris and ignorance of people like the speakeasy gym goers that will prolong the pandemic and arguably case more economic harm than any original lockdowns.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#424

Post by gmanley » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #302

polote wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain. Maybe because nobody successfully proved to these people (me included) that this sacrifice is useful. You can't tell to people, you have no risk of dying (0.5% death rate for population, much much lower for healthy and young people), people who are at risk of dying can protect themselves even around sick people (wearing a mask, staying at hom…

> Maybe because nobody successfully proved to these people (me included) that this sacrifice is useful. > people who are at risk of dying can protect themselves even around sick people (wearing a mask, staying at home, washing hands, ...) This makes it clear "nobody successfully proved" really means "I didn't bother to listen". The messaging on masks has long been "they reduce transmission by infected people", not "t…

I'm still surprised there is so much misinformation about this. There are two categories of masks. The first category only prevent you from spreading the disease. These include paper surgical masks, cloth masks and those blue disposable paper masks. These are only made to prevent you from spreading droplets in the air from your moth and nose. If someone with covid isn't wearing a mask this category won't do anything prevent you from catching it.

The second category are masks such as N95, P95, N99, P100, etc. Things like disposable painter masks or reusable masks with replaceable filters. These are meant to filter out particulate in the air and they do reduce the likelihood of you getting the disease. To call your mask P95 it must be certified by NIOSH and tested to meet the given rating, ie P95 must filter out 95 percent of particulate and be resistant to oil.

In the beginning the US and CDC were not recommending using masks. I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#425

Post by showdeadtest » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #381

andrelayer wrote: post #332

I think a lot of people in this discussion are pitting the argument at people prioritizing their individual choices over the collective health of the community. I think that is a very singular framing from one side. A lot of people I know just believe that the virus itself is not as deadly as the reaction warrants. The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn't nothing and…

> It's pretty rational for someone to understand that and make personal choices without feeling like they're causing real danger to the community. Discounting externalized costs to zero is rational , true; that's the source of the tragedy of commons (in the economics/game theory sense, not necessarily the somewhat disputed original example for which the effect is named.) But that's a manner in which individual ration…

While you raise a good point, I question the wisdom of relying solely on hastily devised rules and accompanying sloganeering to solve such issues.

I understand the pandemic is an emergency, but it was predictable. If we got caught with our pants down, we got caught with our pants down. Personally I think it’s time to put the hysteria aside and start discussing the longer-term view.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#426

Post by bazzert » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #377

polote wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the (developed, and many underdeveloped) world dealt with it and are moving on. I'm not really sure on that, lets take greece, which was praised for their strategy (I was in greece during the lockdown). They didnt have a strategy, they just locked down before there was an outbreak and blocked flights, so no spread. Now they have an outbreak because they stopped all there restrictions. They were just luc…

> The smartest country of all, is Sweden, never locked down, explained to citizen the situation. Managed to get the situation under control without any lockdown, and probably will reach herd immunity before anyone else. Time will tell this is too soon to judge, but they seem well positioned for winning I keep seeing this narrative but I can never find the data to support it. When you look at the data, Sweden has the…

>> 1. Among their neighbors, only Germany has more deaths than Sweden. Norway, Denmark and Finland have fewer almost an order of magnitude less cases and deaths.

Geographic comparisons are of limited usefulness; MA had 10x the death rate of near neighbors NH,VT& ME. There are too many other factors to consider. Sweden still did better than UK, France, Spain, Italy and many others.

>> 2. Despite not being government sanctioned, people still chose to self isolate meaning that the still suffered the economic fallout of that decision. Turns out, a global pandemic is bad for business whether or not your government decides to shut everything down.

Mobility data would suggest otherwise; no masks, kids still in school etc. Life has continued with some restrictions. We could have done the same with similar outcomes. Economy definitely took a hit, but less so than other eurorzone countries.

>> There is no metric by which Sweden is doing any better than anyone else, and is doing a lot worse than their neighbors. The fact that the pandemic is effectively done in Sweden is one. We still dont have an exit strategy.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#427

Post by callmeal » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

andrelayer wrote: post #332

I think a lot of people in this discussion are pitting the argument at people prioritizing their individual choices over the collective health of the community. I think that is a very singular framing from one side. A lot of people I know just believe that the virus itself is not as deadly as the reaction warrants. The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn't nothing and…

>The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn't nothing and warrants action but probably not 40M people unemployed and possible national depression.

This sounds like Y2K all over again. No one is disputing the mortality rate. But it's starting to look like all the people who are pulling out that strawman are ignoring the "infectious" part of that equation.[1]

Do we have enough healthcare capacity to support the people who get sick enough to need care until herd immunity is achieved?

And the same people like to bring up Sweden, all the while conveniently forgetting the social mores and jokes. The headline image from this[0] story makes it very clear that what worked in Sweden would not work anywhere else in the world.

[0] https://europost.eu/en/a/view/sweden-goes-it-alone-28030

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/r-nought-reproduction-numb...

According to a review article published in BMC Medicine, the R0 value of the 1918 pandemic was estimated to be between 1.4 and 2.8.

But when the swine flu, or H1N1 virus, came back in 2009, its R0 value was between 1.4 and 1.6, report researchers in the journal Science.

The R0 for COVID-19 is a median of 5.7, according to a study published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases. That’s about double an earlier R0 estimate of 2.2 to 2.7

...

The researchers estimated a doubling time of 2 to 3 days, which is much faster than earlier estimates of 6 to 7 days. The doubling time is how long it takes for the number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to double.

With an R0 of 5.7, at least 82 percent of the population needs to be immune to COVID-19 to stop its transmission through vaccination and herd immunity.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#428

Post by scottlocklin » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

The responses here are precious. Gym dudes: "leave me alone." Non gym dudes: "you're going to kill us all by doing deadlifts." FWIIW in the interests of full disclosure, I am thoroughly a gym dude, but have my own equipment and a terrible case of misanthropy, so I've been working out at home for years.

I wonder how the paranoiacs who think deadlifters are going to cause mass death mentally deal with the facts on the ground in Sweden. They seem to be doing fine; all they did was prevent large gatherings; no masks, no shut down, yet 4x better covid death rate than, say, Massachusetts, which is still locked down as if we're in the black death. Nobody ever talks about Sweden, I guess because they appear to have gotten it right, making fools of most of the rest of the West.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#429

Post by motbob » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #416

bazzert wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We're approaching the total death toll of World War II[3]. assuming you mean the US death toll also bear in mind the median age of WW II casualties was something like 26; while the median age for covid victims is 75+. Not to diminish the latter but they are very different.

> while the median age for covid victims is 75+. You mean 48. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6924e2-H.pdf

No, that's the median cases age.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#430

Post by spanhandler » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

dragosmocrii wrote: post #349

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…

I am neutral towards your comment, but I feel you're judging me for my beliefs and opinions, even though you don't know where I come from and what's important for me.

There are several decent ways to keep oneself in good shape for a few months while gyms are closed. Insisting this is a big, important problem for you while also (apparently) not taking advantage of those options means the way you're presenting yourself in your comment doesn't look so great, to put it mildly.