Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#531

Post by space_fountain » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

gmanley wrote: post #424

ceejayoz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In addition to what other commenters are saying just like vaccines masks only really work on a population level and even there they don't work as well as vaccines. The figures I've seen claim something in the range of a 20 to 40 percent reduction in risk of catching from an infectious person. That isn't anything like what I'd call protection

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#532

Post by wonder_er » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #524

sushshshsh wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today I learned that getting a haircut with a mask on is equivalent to driving drunk, but protesting or going to a grocery store with a mask on is not.

No one said anything remotely close to that.

You concluded your comment with:

> but I hope it's not controversial that driving drunk is still extremely dangerous.

Which _implies_ that you perceive "haircut with a mask on" to be similarly dangerous.

If my understanding is wrong, please correct me!

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#533

Post by zelly » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

qntty wrote: post #507

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.

We don't wear masks for the cold and flu season because the threshold of dying from them is very high. In an ideal world where everyone were fit with strong immune systems, the threshold of dying from covid would be more similar to that of the flu--you wouldn't need to wear a mask for the same reason you wouldn't need to wear one for the cold and flu season.

(That said I'm not against masks. We should have been wearing them for cold and flu seasons this whole time.)

It's causation, not just correlation. If you want an explanation, here's what physicians say:

> Then, there is Newton's second law: force = mass × acceleration. It requires more muscle force to displace the diaphragm downward when a substantial fat mass lies below it. Abdominal obesity also makes it more difficult to breathe in a prone position that is favored to improve ventilation in patients with COVID-19. Among more specific mechanisms is expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 protein in adipose tissue. This is the docking protein for SARS-CoV-2 to enter a cell, and fat has higher levels than the lungs and so may serve as a viral refuge and replication site, prolonging virus shedding.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5677

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#534

Post by downandout » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #498

stinkytaco wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (I cant speak to the statistical truth of this, but that’s beside the point) Is it beside the point? It's false. Lightning kills about 50 people a year in the US [1]. It's frankly fairly rare to get struck by lightning [2]. More people under 34 have died from COVID-19 per month since April than die from lightning in a year [3] (quick note that the breakdown is 25-34). That's to say nothing of long term health impac…

> Lightning kills OP said "hit by," not "killed by." I wasn't able to find a number for people being struck by lightning in a cursory search other than "hundreds more" than are killed by lightning.

The CDC link he posted for lightning data [1] said that your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 500,000. Also according to the CDC [2], a total of 1,201 out of a population of ~40 million US people aged 25-34 [3] have died in a “COVID related death” in the US between February 1 and August 19. This represents 3.2% of deaths from all causes during this time period in this age range.

Assuming you believe these numbers to not be somewhat inflated despite widespread reporting of such incidents, the odds of dying from COVID as a 25-34 year old in the US are 1 in ~33,000. This is ~15x times the odds of being struck by lightning. However, I would imagine those odds go down significantly further among 25-34 year olds with no risk factors, and it is largely the people with no risk factors that are going to speakeasy gyms.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html

[2] https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku

[3] https://www.infoplease.com/us/census/demographic-statistics

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#535

Post by dang » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #31

Did the "shutdown normal gym" mean that patrons would be violating whatever policies forced the gym to shutdown in the first place? If so, that really bothers me. Any excess contagion would endanger everyone, not just the gym users. Please consider reporting the details to the appropriate authorities. EDIT: If someone is inclined to downvote this comment, I'd be very grateful for a clarification why (comment or DM).…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24211833.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#536

Post by JeremyNT » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #273

readingnews wrote: post #211

There is a crossfit gym that I pass by every morning on the way to work. It is full, and never stopped during this pandemic. Even at 7AM, it is full of patrons. I would call the "proper authorities", but since there is a State Police car parked outside every morning, and he is in there working out, just like before the pandemic, I doubt calling anyone would do anything. Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is…

Let me preface: I've abstained from going to the gym since we went into lockdown, and even now that we are out of it here. I am looking into equipment at home, and I can at least keep my fitness, if not my strength, by going mountain biking. That said, there are many types of training you can't do without the right equipment, so it's at least a bit more than just wanting to be with others. Strength training/powerlift…

> That said, there are many types of training you can't do without the right equipment, so it's at least a bit more than just wanting to be with others. Strength training/powerlifting/olympic lifting all come to mind. It's often really difficult to keep a rack, barbell and hundreds of kilos of weight at home, and obviously not something people had just lying around in case of an emergency.

Yeah, this is pretty important. I used to lift and there's simply no way that I would make the investment to have all that equipment in my house. In normal times it's incredibly wasteful for each individual to stockpile their own redundant junk, rather than share a common pool with others. [0]

I switched to a more equipment-light calisthenics routine years ago with a few items I have around the house, so the current pandemic does not impact my own fitness routine - but for people looking to get really strong this is no substitute for lifting heavy.

[0] As an aside: this shouldn't only apply to gym equipment, communal resources should be way more common for economic and sustainability reasons. There's no reason at all every homeowner should have a lawnmower, for example.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#537

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

polote wrote: post #278

readingnews wrote: post #211

There is a crossfit gym that I pass by every morning on the way to work. It is full, and never stopped during this pandemic. Even at 7AM, it is full of patrons. I would call the "proper authorities", but since there is a State Police car parked outside every morning, and he is in there working out, just like before the pandemic, I doubt calling anyone would do anything. Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#538

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #361

TheNorthman wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was true, we'd see landlords with paid-off mortgages waiving the rent. Since we don't see this on any major scale, we can only conclude that mortgages are inconsequential to landlords demanding rent-payments.

A mortgage is not the only cost of owning a property. Taxes are a third of my mortgage payment every month. Other than the IRS delaying tax day by 3 months, I haven't seen any delay or waivers of taxes due. In addition, there's basic upkeep and maintenance that you're required to perform to keep a building insured, let alone to make it re-openable at some point.

[deleted]

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#539

Post by kodablah » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #156

dx87 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now we have a lot of governors issuing decrees based on emergency authorities that they’ve been using for six months. This is quite simply a conflict with our basic notion of democracy. We do not have rulers, yet our governors are issuing rules purportedly carrying the weight of law with no oversight from legislature. That was my biggest issue with the whole situation in the USA. All of these emergency measures wer…

> doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID. Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID? What do mayors gain by forcing people to wear masks post-COVID? It's in the government's interest, as an institution, to open things up ASAP. They're hemorrhaging money. The things I'd actually worry about -- using COVID t…

> I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID. > Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID?

I think your lack of understanding is because you frame the question as nuanced to keeping two types of establishments closed. Instead ask questions like: Why would governors want to keep overriding city-level authority? Why would governors want to maintain control over federal funds and subsidies related to health crises? Why would governors want to be able to selectively close certain types of businesses (e.g. close bars, allow restaurants, differentiate between the two based on arbitrary number, disallow one to become the other)? Why would governors want to disallow certain medical procedures (e.g. abortion)?

I can go on and on. The general question is whether executive power at any government level begets more executive power, and the answer is almost always "yes".

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#540

Post by sneak » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

hadleybelter wrote: post #210

sneak wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting to the authorities in the US means calling the police. Don’t call the police in America. Furthermore, virus or no virus, the right to peacefully assemble is a human right that cannot legally or morally be abridged. I don’t want the police to shut down protests. I also don’t want them to shut down gyms, or voting, or churches, or any other peaceful reason (dumb) people wish to assemble. Assembly in the middl…

>I also don’t want them to shut down gyms, or voting, or churches, or any other peaceful reason (dumb) people wish to assemble. You are attempting to equate assembly for the purpose of fighting racism or exercising vitally important activities like voting, with "assembly" for the purpose of "sick gainz bruh". This is such a false equivalency that it's laughable, and honestly also a little insulting.

The right to peaceful assembly is not conditional on legitimate purpose; same as the right to free expression.

Free speech means freedom to shitpost, not just write literature.

Correspondingly, freedom of assembly is for stupid and pointless things like church, moderately important things like gym, and not just critically important things like insurrection.

The proliferation of “illegal” gyms suggests that many people feel similarly.