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Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

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Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#861

Post by notyourwork »

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…

> Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is really strange that people feel they have to go work out in groups. Or get together, or go to bars. I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.

When problems are on this massive of a scale it is easy for individuals to think "cannot be me". Reality is that it is all of us.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#862

Post by rockinghigh »

ekianjo wrote: post #768
svnpenn wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has twice the population of the United States. Yet despite this, United States has 4 TIMES the cases per day. Europe can relax because they worked hard in the beginning to get everything under control. The US never did that, most states (like my home state of Texas) did a half-assed closing for 3 weeks, so the numbers never really got under control.

> Europe can relax because they worked hard in the beginning to get everything under control. Where do you see that COVID19 is over? > under control A very steep second wave of infection is, to me, the opposite of "under control". Do you actually check data? https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/fr Also, just routinely mentioning: "No country knows the total number of people infected with COVID-19. All we know…

It's under control from a death perspective. Daily deaths number have been in the 0-20 range for 2+ months in France. The numbers are 100x higher in the US (500-1500/day) over the same period with 5 times the population.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#863

Post by dang »

monadic2 wrote: post #838
dang wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I emphatically reject the idea that the above poster has any role in any community anyone would wish to join, I do sincerely appreciate your efforts to moderate and I will avoid personal attacks in the future. Excepting Walter Bright, that dude's a complete asshole.

I'll take it. :)

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#864

Post by noelsusman »

zozin wrote: post #599
showdeadtest wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more and more people are tired of having their jobs, educations, and social activities toyed with like they are trivial things.

The lock downs were premised upon preventing hospital systems from being overwhelmed. We accomplished that relatively easily, at least in the United States. However, politicians and bureaucrats, unwilling to let a good crisis go to waste, have moved the goalposts so much that now the unspoken policy seems to be that a single infection/death is anathema and that everything should be done to prevent it. I don't remembe…

I genuinely don't understand what you're talking about. Preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed was not the only purpose of the lockdowns. The lockdowns have not continued indefinitely. A single infection/death is not anathema and nobody is doing everything to prevent it no matter the cost. If that were true then why has every stay-at-home order been lifted?

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#865

Post by gruez »

nightski wrote: post #449
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "possible depression". Depression. The economy crashed. It's over. The government's been buying the stock market to prop everything up. All the numbers you see are fabricated. The market never recovered from the initial crash. Last I checked a 3rd of Americans aren't paying rent now? It's going to explode dude.

The stock market recovery is not due to the government "buying the stock market" because they never did that. If you look at winners and losers in the stock market, followed the Q2 earnings season and saw what companies were facing, it seems clear to me that our economy faced a transition rather than a crash. There are huge winners in this market. Home Depot, Target, and other major retailers all announced record bre…

>The stock market recovery is not due to the government "buying the stock market" because they never did that

Whether they directly bought stocks is irrelevant because money's fungible. They injected trillions of dollars into the economy[1]. If that drove institutional investors to stocks from treasuries/bonds (in search of higher returns), the effect is identical to them buying stocks directly.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#866

Post by [deleted] »

polote wrote: post #618
michaelmrose wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people like you wont wear a mask or social distance and the portion that are asymptomatic pass it around you will help it spread far and wide maximizing the chances that even careful people will become ill eventually. Wearing a mask is mostly about keeping the respiratory droplets of the ill, including the 40-50% which don't have obvious symptoms from spreading around. If only the vulnerable wear masks they wont b…

I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to sacrifice a lot of my freedom to prevent unhealthy or old people to die. You could tell me that I'm wrong, but as far as I know, I'm the only one able to know how I want to live my life

[deleted]

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#867

Post by jameshart »

seizethecheese wrote: post #617
johnwalkr wrote: post #543

Wow with these comments. You going to the gym is not saving the economy. Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores or the stock market. And by not doing your part, your whole community could be stunted for 2 years. Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to s…

> congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. This is wrong and misleading. You're quoting the average fatality rate for "healthy" people, but the distribution doesn't look like that at all. Then, you cherrypick 10% out of now…

Age is not the only thing that could raise an individual's risk factor to 10%. There is no reason why individuals not in their 80s might, for some other reason, be in a category with higher mortality risk. Honestly, we don't know that much about this disease yet - but we do know that the outcomes for different people can be very diverse.

One problem with age-based stats like this is that it gives the impression that the way to think about risk is along the lines of russian roulette: when someone gets infected, the great actuary in the sky rolls a D100, consults the tables, and if their roll is good, they don't die.

But what if the die was already rolled for some individuals? What if, say, one in 100 people carry a genetic risk factor that means that if they get COVID, they have a much higher risk of dying - regardless of their age? That hypothesis is also compatible with the statistical data we are looking at.

You could also consider, what if some people have particular predisposition to become a superspreader and infect many more people?

If the population contains individuals for whom their individual outcome risk, or their potential impact on other people, is significantly above the average, then by reducing the spread of the disease we reduce the number of such people who ever get infected. You can prevent the D100 having to be rolled for as many people, including people who need to roll much higher to survive.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#868

Post by jorblumesea »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #837
jorblumesea wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people with actual skin in the games, you know, their lives. Your business goes under it sucks but you won't die. Only in America would people legitimately make the argument that it's ok to expose people to risk because people someone is losing money. Who are you to put a value on my loved ones lives? 1/100 chance, 1/1000 chance, why does any of that matter? Fuck your business, it won't bring my parents bac…

You do realize that this "somebody losing money" in the aggregate relates not just to some cliche notion of greedy capitalists getting angry about a few less bags of money. Instead it literally means economic ruin possibly hitting millions of people and less directly causing tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, not to mention destroyed families, individual lives and all sorts of psychological and so…

Yeah, no.

Filing for bankruptcy will never, ever be equivalent to someone dying from willful negligence because you wanted to keep you business open.

Full stop. There's no argument you could make, it's never going to be equivalent and there's nothing you can say that will balance that out.

I say again, fuck your business. Any size of business. Small family business, large corporation, hot dog stand. If you can't it open, safely, without getting people killed, then you're toast.

Any argument you make is just muddying the waters. This is very clear and unambiguous.

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#869

Post by dcolkitt »

akeck wrote: post #798
dasudasu wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that's not as if death was the only bad outcome. Not that we can even pretend to know the long-term effects yet, but anecdotally it seems that some people are already experiencing them, which include lung scarring and neurological symptoms.

For example, in a recent study, 78% percent of recovered people had heart changes visible on a CMRI weeks after recovery. COVID-19 is going to have a long tail... [1] Outcomes of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Recently Recovered From Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Puntmann et al, JAMA Cardiology, 2020

This isn’t really substantially different than regular influenza. Indeed a very high proportion of flu patients show the exact same CMRI heart changes.[1]

Yet we know that while heart attack risk is elevated for a few weeks after a bout of flu, it reverts to baseline for virtually all otherwise healthy patients.

The myth of long-term COVID heart damage is, as of the evidence yet, media scaremongering. We have no reason to believe that COVID behaves any different than any other common respiratory infection in this regard.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/1...

Re: Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

#870

Post by mrexroad »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #844
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…

The argument isn't about whether masks do or do not work (they do). The argument is about whether or not it makes sense to shut down the entire economy when only the very sick, very old, or very obese are really at serious risk. The obvious solution is: If you are at risk, or worried about COVID, don't leave your house. To everyone else: wear a mask, stay away from people, follow the precautions...but go do what you…

> The argument is about whether or not it makes sense to shut down the entire economy when only the very sick, very old, or very obese are really at serious risk.

Tell that to my buddy who almost died. Healthy, early 40s, no pre-existing conditions.

Also... there are plenty of people who do not fall in out-group rhetoric of being “Very sick, very old, or very obese” who are extremely vulnerable. Or, is that you just define “very sick” as anyone who is not like you?

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