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South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

koreaherald.com

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Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#41

Post by fy20 »

nicoburns wrote: post #22
daveslash wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the intent, but if it's too risky to be in a gym with people working out in sync with 120bpm, then my personal risk assessment would say it's too risky to be in the gym, period . I wouldn't feel any better just because the music was 90bpm. Edit: Then again, humans are notoriously bad at evaluating risk, so I may be way off base. :-)

FWIW, I went for a heart checkup at the hospital recently. They were doing ECGs as normal, but they weren't doing ECGs-while-exercising due to covid risk. I think the difference between regular breathing and hard breathing due to intense exercise may be significant. My personal take on gyms would be that well ventilated ones are likely quite safe, but the most are probably not sufficiently well ventilated.

If anything I'd expect gyms to be better ventilated than offices or supermarkets. I'd imagine smelling of stale body odour isn't a great selling point for most gyms (maybe the more hardcore gyms it is?), and there's no way they are going to keep that out without decent ventilation.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#42

Post by phillc73 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #34
beamatronic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you are joking about the taped-off greeting cards?

I don't have a photo of my own experience, but here's a news article with one: https://www.cpr.org/2020/04/06/in-summit-county-essential-bu...

My crazy experience in Austria was that one was unable to buy plastic forks. Packets of plastic knives were still on shelves, but the forks had been removed. I thought it was random luck, but three large supermarkets were the same. I guess they really didn’t want people eating at those forbidden gatherings.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#43

Post by thinkingemote »

hntrowaway837 wrote: post #18

South Korea has had 2044 deaths, out of 51.7 million people. That's a death rate surely under the usual "flu and pneumonia" rate. I don't understand, I really don't. I anybody can explain, I'd very much appreciate.

It's behavioural modification, and it actually works. The aim is to encourage people to do certain things. To that end, restricting various things which on their own seem nonsensical, actually becomes justified if it changes behaviour.

It's also "optics" which is mainly psychological.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#44

Post by rsynnott »

beamatronic wrote: post #32
BitwiseFool wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of how grocery stores were allowed to remain open, but the greeting card aisle was taped off because they didn't want people going to birthday parties. It felt like insanity, what if I wanted to send a card in-lieu of going to a gathering? Didn't matter. They weren't going to sell me one.

Surely you are joking about the taped-off greeting cards?

Wasn’t common, but a few jurisdictions had a weirdly literal take on essential retail.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#45

Post by kube-system »

sschueller wrote: post #36
aunty_helen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the covid cost cutting takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to justify. But really it's just cost cutting.

Isn't relish like the third most popular condiment on a hot dog? I guess the profit margin isn't as crazy as it is with ketchup and mustard.

Does costco profit on their hot dogs? I thought the snack bar was all loss-leader. https://thetakeout.com/costco-loses-money-every-time-it-sell...

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#46

Post by throwawaysea »

If this isn’t illustrative of the tradeoff between freedom/individual liberties and overbearing government imposed restrictions, I don’t know what is. This particular type of restriction ends up being acceptable to some because they aren’t the ones losing out on a freedom they exercise, while others feel like they’re losing more relative to others - it’s a classic tyranny of the majority. We have a solution for all of this - it is to educate people but let people do what they want. Those who think the risks are too great should constrain their own lives, instead of demanding that everyone else change all of society to create an acceptable risk profile for those who are risk-averse.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#47

Post by nitwit005 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #20
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

"Free Democracies" are passing the weirdest restrictions. It's mind boggling just how much power our governments are allowed to wield. I'm not even a libertarian and I think this is government overreach. So you're going to allow people to work out in gyms, but playing music that's too fast is somehow too dangerous to allow? Come on. If it was a real problem you'd just close the gyms again.

There's a tendency with people in authority to want to be seen as engaged and acting responsibly, so they "do something" such as take a half step towards the more extreme response, even if rationally the half-step does nothing. Or such is my observation.

Yep. Something must be done, so they do something.

People often do seem much happier when some action is taken, even if they know it's meaningless, so it's not exactly an irrational response on the part of the leadership.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#48

Post by agubelu »

blakesterz wrote: post #3

The actual title of the article: Say goodbye to Gangnam Style, treadmill running for next 2 weeks: Some Level 4 distancing rules being called ‘illogical, nonsensical’ "Under Level 4 rules, taking showers within fitness club premises is prohibited and only a limited number of users are allowed in each area at a time. At the same time, the running speed on treadmills is capped at 6 kilometers per hour. Music played at…

That's crazy. Are they going to limit the amount of weight you can lift as well?

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#49

Post by t-writescode »

metalliqaz wrote: post #2

They are limiting pretty much all high-intensity exercise in an attempt to prevent the spread by way of heavy breathing. Sure, the headline sounds ridiculous to my American ears, but I wonder if there is a cultural-specific reason for the music. For example, perhaps synchronized dance is an extremely common exercise class in Korea.

One of the first surprising cases I remember in the US was a Washington-based church choir singing while following all concurrently enforced precautions.

I don’t expect they were doing intense dances or movements at rehearsals.

The danger is simply prolonged exposure in spaces with low air flow.

Edit: I’m not a doctor, I could be wrong.

Re: South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike

#50

Post by sugardough »

South Korean here and I just wanted to add some thoughts. The real reasoning for the ridiculous ban is because they've been shutting down the gyms whenever the numbers spike but can't anymore because the business owners are in a desperate state because of the prolonged shutdowns. So it's their way of saying please don't to the gyms while avoiding a total outlash from the gym owners.

Obviously how well we're managing the pandemic while protecting civil liberty and privacy is a hot political discussion. We managed to keep things mostly under control and prevented total medical system collapse and kept the mortality rate low, while on the other side we didn't put nearly as enough resources into securing the vaccines so we're paying the price now.

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