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Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

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Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#501

Post by Arcuru »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #385
eanzenberg wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>I would call the "proper authorities" Why? What harm is going on here? If you don’t like it, don’t participate. Leave us alone, narc.

The problem is, of course, that those same people in the gym—an environment which is naturally quite conducive to spreading infections—later go to their workplace, or their doctor, or their public transport, or a bar, and back to the gym. By doing that, they can carry an infection around to others, even if they aren’t themselves symptomatic. This contributes to the general public health problem, increasing the infect…

> I don’t know who initially said it, but… I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.

There might be a different source, but I first saw it here - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to...

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#502

Post by dang »

monadic2 wrote: post #468
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…

Fuck you.

Yikes, posting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. We've had to ask you about this kind of thing before.

Could you please take the spirit of the site more to heart? HN is a community of millions of people in many countries. It is inevitably divided on any issue where society (societies) are deeply divided. We can't get anywhere by pretending otherwise. We can't get anywhere by trying to impose one view on everybody. We can't get anywhere by "fuck you".

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#503

Post by recursive »

aspaceman wrote: post #475
recursive wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. Under what circumstances are you proposing that we'd be able to open back up? What's different now (or could have been) than it was when you claim we should be been locking down the first time? Certainly no amount of locking down would completely eradicate the virus, so what's the exit strategy?

If people listened. There's a genuine culture difference in America, call it American Exceptionalism if you want, that's caused all sorts of normal preventative measures to be ignored or actively rejected. Many businesses actively rejected the idea of requiring masks, today some businesses still refuse service if you're wearing a mask. That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me. Moreso in this thread you have hundreds of…

> They didn't make nearly as much of a fuss about it all.

Yes. But my point is, I don't see how that could make them any closer to re-opening. The virus still exists. All the factors in play when the lockdowns started are still in play.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#504

Post by nateburke »

mrob wrote: post #229
LegitShady wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One-legged bodyweight squats + whatever heavy things you have available (e.g. bottles of water) in a backpack should be difficult enough. If you care about "functional strength" then it's arguably superior than barbell squats. And one-handed pushups are good substitute for benchpress.

Or go and find a tree branch for pullups/muscleups/dips.

Or do some 100m max effort hill repeats

Or jump squats

Or buy a futon and try moving that heavy and bulky mattress up a flight of stairs, alone.

There are hundreds of ways to get great workouts that do not require an indoor gym.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#505

Post by s1artibartfast »

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?

What do you consider incredibly dangerous?

In the US, roughly 150 per 1m people catch covid per day. Infection fatality for 20-29 is about 7/100,000. For 365 days, that is about a 1/million chance of dying of covid (for a 20 something year old) .

For context[1]: For similar ages, the suicide rate is 200/ million. Deaths from unintentional injury is 600/ million Deaths from heart disease is roughly 100/ million

When I put this into a threat model, I should put about 1000X more effort into these areas. A 10% reduction in risk of heart disease is an equal trade-off with +900% chance of contracting covid.

[1] https://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#506

Post by JoshuaDavid »

throwawaygh wrote: post #486
JoshuaDavid wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're approaching the total death toll of World War II[3]. We're really not though. World War II killed somewhere in the ballpark of 75 million people. COVID-19 has a bit under 800,000 known deaths. Even if we say that for every person who is known to have died of covid, 5 additional people died and were recorded as deaths from other causes (and it's not that high, you can check the excess mortality stats to confir…

I think he meant US deaths because his source is a list of WWII deaths by country. That is actually fairly accurate: 170K direct, he assumes ~2x if you count indirect, so ~400K which is indeed approaching total US WWII casualities (460K or so). Even if you don't count or differently count indirect deaths, I'd still say going from 0 to 170K in 6 months with no end in sight definitely constitutes "approaching". We'll g…

Ok, but WWII wasn't really a horrifying war because of the number of _American_ casualties. The US lost 0.35% of its population as casualties to WWII, which was pretty close to the percentage of the _world_ population, _including non-participating countries_, that died in WWII (0.33%). Russia, which _was_ a good example of a country that got hit hard by WWII, lost 15%.

By contrast, the US _is_ one of the countries hit hardest by covid -- the US has about 5x the number of deaths per capita as the world average.

It's a little less egregious if the original poster meant "US casualties in WWII vs US deaths from covid" but it's still a misleading comparison.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#507

Post by qntty »

zelly wrote: post #409

Virtually all the people who died of covid were fat[1]. If the military forced everyone to exercise (and diet, but that's harder to mandate than exercising) it would have been much more effective than forcing everyone to wear masks. (Masks are still good though.) Most of us are going to get covid even if we stay inside all day (I got it twice) so this should be a wake-up call to be prepared to survive it. Or don't, s…

Correlation not causation. No doubt it would have an effect but it's ridiculous to say that it would have a greater effect than masks without data.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#508

Post by RobRivera »

cowpig wrote: post #375
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... No, it's not; it's arrogant. All of the epidemiologists and experts seem to think otherwise. What do you know that they don't? So far 172,000 people have died in the US due to Coronavirus, directly[1]. The actual number of people who have died, if you factor in the effect of the virus on infrastructure and missed diagnoses is about dou…

We are nowhere near the ww2 death toll, objectively speaking.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#509

Post by rootusrootus »

lazide wrote: post #358
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…

Best data I've seen is 6x (.63% IFR). And due to lack of existing immunity from the Flu which keeps the flu at less than 10% of the population/yr, we're looking at a dramatic death toll. That people don't want to believe it, without evidence to the contrary, just makes them solidly into the wishful thinking category - and likely spreaders that will inevitably get someone killed.

Even at 6x, it still very much comes up for debate. Most reasonable people can agree that a .01% IFR is not worth shutting everything down for, and that a 50% IFR is definitely worth shutting everything down for. Where you fall on this spectrum determines whether someone will call you a wishful thinker or not. Everyone believes their own opinion is the best.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#510

Post by throwawaygh »

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #506
throwawaygh wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant US deaths because his source is a list of WWII deaths by country. That is actually fairly accurate: 170K direct, he assumes ~2x if you count indirect, so ~400K which is indeed approaching total US WWII casualities (460K or so). Even if you don't count or differently count indirect deaths, I'd still say going from 0 to 170K in 6 months with no end in sight definitely constitutes "approaching". We'll g…

Ok, but WWII wasn't really a horrifying war because of the number of _American_ casualties. The US lost 0.35% of its population as casualties to WWII, which was pretty close to the percentage of the _world_ population, _including non-participating countries_, that died in WWII (0.33%). Russia, which _was_ a good example of a country that got hit hard by WWII, lost 15%. By contrast, the US _is_ one of the countries hi…

I agree "US casualties in WWII vs US deaths from covid" is far more appropriate. OP forgot to say US and you were right to point this out.

Past that, at some point it's hard for me to take this sort of thing too seriously. OP probably doesn't have a copy editor for the online comments he's writing from the shitter/waiting for the coffee brewer.

It's a reasonable comparison because, sans COVID context, literally every American would answer "yes" to the question "did lots of Americans die in WWII?"

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