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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

#71

Post by nicoburns »

fy20 wrote: post #41
nicoburns wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If anything I'd expect gyms to be better ventilated than offices or supermarkets

I certainly wouldn't be at all surprised if gyms ended up being safer than offices and supermarkets. Offices in particular (where one typically spends hours in the same room) seem pretty unsafe to me.

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

#72

Post by sugardough »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #26
briefcomment wrote: post #12

I was curious what the vaccination rate was in South Korea, and was surprised to see that their first-vaccination rate was below 30% just two weeks ago [1]. [1] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccinatio...

Paradoxical but not really surprising, because the countries in desperate need of vaccination are those hit hard by COVID-19 anyway. SK vaccination rate has been comparably slower than some other countries but still in accordance with the goverment's original plan: it went from 7% to ~30% over the course of a single month of June for example.

They used up all the stock for the second shot for initial dose to inflate the numbers and hit the goal. We're short on vaccines, which is why the number of people fully vaccinated has stagnated for weeks since June.

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

#73

Post by SllX »

leppr wrote: post #66
SllX wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A democracy is just government by its people. People will try to pass any sort of law they fancy will do the thing they want it to do, whether or not it actually will is besides the point. The quality of the government is still going to be a factor of the quality of the people that a government can be drawn from, and legislative branches are often the most powerful in a free society precisely because if they could sp…

> A democracy is just government by its people. In theory yes that's what Democracy originally meant. In practice the "democracies" we know are "government by some group of popular noblemen" not by "its people".

Dunno about South Korea or your government, but that’s short selling all the democracies that give a wide variety of people enough rope to hang all their neighbors and then themselves with. My envelope of ballots are often 3 or 4 pages front and back, mostly offices to be filled but generally a good stack of ballot initiatives to go with them, covering two or three elections. Sometimes twice a year.

And that’s just the electoral process. Self-government extends far beyond the ballot box.

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

#74

Post by kube-system »

hntrowaway837 wrote: post #64
kube-system wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. To determine this, look at the total infection rate as well. South Korea is 329.92 per 100,000 people California is 9,712.28 per 100,000 people France is 9,002.09 per 100,000 people England is 8,004.18 per 100,000 people Finland is 1,772.60 per 100,000 people Taiwan, which also was hit hard by SARS... 64.13 per 100,000 people. These people have already been through respiratory epidemics in their lifetime, and th…

The infection rate is also commensurate with general immune system fitness. Remember in bad covid what we observe is vascular system failure, and we know that chronic hyperglycemia damages blood vessels. Combine that with non functional immune systems and this is what you get.

Switzerland has a higher life expectancy than South Korea, and has a very wealthy and healthy population.

Spain and Italy have both held the titles of "healthiest country in the world" in recent years.

All three have incidence rates more than an order of magnitude larger than South Korea.

Wearing respiratory protection equipment protects against respiratory contaminants. Testing people and tracing contacts helps to contain outbreaks. The answer is really that simple. South Korea was one of (if not) the first countries to start an aggressive testing and tracing program.

On TV, I watched their citizens line up in cars at mass testing sites months before my multi-billion-dollar healthcare conglomerate here in the US even had testing available at all.

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

#75

Post by metalliqaz »

glennvtx wrote: post #17
taurath wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll offer a potential explanation - they may have had outbreaks specifically around high effort fitness spinning classes but they wish to keep the gyms open for older people and people with disabilities for whom it’s their only exercise. It’s cutting quite a line for sure but often there is a very specific context for rules like this - think about all those times when you’ve had to go “what happened for them to have…

It doesn't really matter what their justification might be, Threats of violence against people for listening to music is a trespass of basic human rights.

but that's not what it is. It's not a prohibition against music, it's prohibition against group classes set to that music. I presume anyone can listen to any music they please in private.

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

#76

Post by kube-system »

hntrowaway837 wrote: post #69
kube-system wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. To determine this, look at the total infection rate as well. South Korea is 329.92 per 100,000 people California is 9,712.28 per 100,000 people France is 9,002.09 per 100,000 people England is 8,004.18 per 100,000 people Finland is 1,772.60 per 100,000 people Taiwan, which also was hit hard by SARS... 64.13 per 100,000 people. These people have already been through respiratory epidemics in their lifetime, and th…

And what exactly did they do SO much better? My country wore masks, no social gatherings, distancing. What more?

I'm not sure how I am expected to answer that question without knowing which country you are asking me to compare.

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

#77

Post by iaHN »

colordrops wrote: post #38

I'm glad we are finally at a point where that skepticism around strict covid policies, such as in this thread, can be expressed without being immediately attacked. Questioning anything 6 months ago would have gotten you shut down or banned, depending on the forum.

I don't know about that. I received some negative comments recently for asking for evidence that wearing a mask, while outdoors, while socially distanced was ever effective.

People still have their egos and identities attached to this, seeing disagreement as a personal or political attack.

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

#78

Post by ridaj »

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.

I think the problem here is democracies attempting to exercise restraint in response to popular concerns about overreach. I'm pretty sure the more effective response from a public health standpoint, and probably the starting point of the negotiation, would be to close cluster-friendly places like indoor gyms hard and early. Some special interest - gym owners, restaurants, whatever - gets in and says, but but we pRoMiSe to behave. What happens next in too many democracies is unfortunately this: some wishy-washy middle ground is negotiated that is politically acceptable but ineffective in reality, the epidemic gets out of control and then you get REAL overreach for a really long time, like long-term travel restrictions, curfews, etc.

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

#79

Post by yongjik »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #67
yongjik wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow this argument. By your own argument, the government could simply close the gyms - and it even has the power! But because they feared political backlash (this wonderful thing called "democracy"), the government made a stupid compromise and settled with a lesser (and less effective) restriction, and this proves that the government has too much power?

In essence, closing the gyms is a straightforward action the government can take. The government is exercising their power, but the scope is limited. By allowing the gyms to remain open only if they implement a multitude of restrictions based on a tier system seems like the government is intervening with a greater scope. Closing the gym is simple, they have the authority to do that. Telling gyms they cannot run tread…

Well, I do agree that this restriction sounds ridiculous (and frankly it also sounds ineffective), but the thing is, the reason for this half-ass measure is that so many small businesses (like gyms) are already terribly hit by COVID, and there's a limit on how much the government can push before people decide "Ah fuck it, I'm opening my shops anyway! And have a drink with my buddies while I'm at it."

So you might as well ask "Does the people (i.e. gym owners or partygoers) have too much power?" A compromise means there are two sides.

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

#80

Post by samatman »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #27
015a wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what we call "compromise"; when you've got a reasonable position on one side, a reasonable position on the other, and the solution is to meet in the middle and produce policy which is totally unreasonable and makes no one happy.

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.

In the US at least, this was mostly state governments trying to define "essential commerce", rather than preventing the sale of things that might lead to large gatherings. The idea was anything you don't need to stay alive, you don't need to be buying.

The armed standoff in Michigan was a direct result of this, Governor Whitmer banned the sale of home improvement goods (such as paint) and garden supplies (including seeds), in the spring, while ordering most of the population to stay at home. This was perceived by the population as unreasonable, and those restrictions were rolled back within a week of the protests.

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