"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.
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.
It seemed there was a story like this every day back in early 2020. The interesting thing was how much variation there was even among different states in the US on identical issues. For example, West Virginia encouraged people to go fishing by waiving license requirements during the lockdowns [1] while Washington completely banned recreational fishing statewide [2].
>they didn't want people going to birthday parties.
Did they state this reason? If so that's probably close to madness. But it does seem like a product that is frequently handled and returned to the shelves would be a good vector to suspend...
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.
Seems more likely that they were just in short supply. Plastic forks always sell better than other plastic cutlery. I don't think there's much panic buying of plastic forks but it's the kind of item they probably weren't in a hurry to restock when there's a massive run on toilet paper and pasta.
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.
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.
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 treadmills past 6 km/h and cannot play music faster than 120 bpm seems like a much bigger exercise of power than telling the gyms they can't be open. Was the ability to make such detailed restrictions granted by law? Or only assumed to be allowable in the name of public health?
Does my perspective seem a bit more approachable using that lens?
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.
> Telling gyms they cannot run treadmills past 6 km/h and cannot play music faster than 120 bpm seems like a much bigger exercise of power than telling the gyms they can't be open.
This is an interesting perspective and helps to explain a little more your original comment.
It seems that your objection is not necessarily the government's authority being excessive but rather too micromanaging? This is a sentiment I think most people can relate too - in our work, we'd rather our boss give us a straight no than make us jump through a dozen hoops and red tape. But in the real world where many different liberties are at stake such as the ability for businesses to make money and citizens to stay healthy, then policing in minutiae could have real tangible benefits.
I'm not saying that I agree with this policy - just trying to highlight your sentiment about not wanting to be micromanaged might be orthogonal to your stated desire not to be oppressed by an overreaching government.
I really appreciate the way you're looking at my post even though you do not share my views. Yes, I am somewhat worried about micromanaging in-and-of-itself, but my main concern is that the kinds of controls the government is imposing here don't seem to come from a legitimate basis, a law passed by representatives.
I don't think every single thing an executive does needs to be explicitly enumerated, but in this case forbidding songs above a certain BPM just seems excessive. I do not think public health and safety laws had such finely detailed actions in mind when they were passed decades ago. And as a measure to try and stop COVID, what they're prohibiting is very indirect and hard to effectively measure.
I don't think these restrictions are the kind of government oppression worthy of throwing tea into harbors for, but I do worry just how much we allow governments to control in a state of emergency. Especially stuff like this, which make you wonder "who gave you the right to ban this stuff in the first place?"
It is not arbitrary, the very decision to limit high intensity workouts including the BPM restriction is coordinated between the government and gyms (the Korea Fitness Manager Association in this case) [1].
[1] https://www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/5586611 "거리를 두고 기본적인 방역수칙 외에도 특히 차단해야 되는 부분들에 대한 수칙을 만들기 위해서 애를 썼고, 관련 협회들에서도 그런 측면에서 어떤 것들을 좀 차단시키고 노력하겠다, 라고 제시한 수칙입니다." (Rough translation: In addition to the basic prevention measures like social distancing, we have also tried to make a list of especially required additional measures that the related associations have agreed upon with that context.)
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 speak with one voice, there’s effectively no law they could not pass. That’s why they are bodies of distinguishable and accountable people instead of individuals.
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.
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.
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.
When the hospitals run out of beds, it's a collapse in the system. It's not a "total medical system collapse" since it lasted a day or two and the number of people affected was small (probably around 10-100), but the situation could have easily been worse and we would have had one like new york last year.
It was never about deaths, it was always about number of hospital beds. If hospitals are over capacity, many people will die of covid and other curable and preventable things. Think Italy or Bolivia(?) in the beginning of the pandemic, with people literally dying on the streets.
You've probably heard of the parable of weeds growing on the lake. Every day it doubles, filling the lake in sixty days. When is the lake half full? At the fifty-ninth day.
SK is having >1k new patients per day now - an exponential growth means you're much closer to "total medical system collapse" than it seems.
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.
It's going to take awhile for people to go through all the stages of grief about how ineffective and intrusive many of the state interventions during this pandemic really were.
Judging by the number of young, healthy, vaccinated people I still see outdoors in masks, it's still denial for a lot of them.
Come on. Every COVID-related thread throughout the last year here has been absolutely crawling with deniers, misinformation, conspiracy theories, rants about freedom, anti-vaxism, you name it--basically everything that you wrap up in that "skepticism" euphemism. I can tell you how trying to combat all this garbage has been: Both sides got the roller-coaster of up and down votes. It's just absurdly politically charged.
In this case, the authorities clearly acknowledging the difficulty for businesses, looking for tradeoffs, trying to keep them open while making compromises to at least reduce the risk. But no... Even that's not enough! Everything is black-and-white now: You either have zero restrictions or it's authoritarian overreach.
You are proving my point. You have no idea what my views are or what I'm skeptical about, if anything. You just emotionally oppose skepticism of any sort, rational or not.
Just because there are a bunch of unhinged people with crazy ideas doesn't mean all skepticism or discussion around an extremely complex topic is unwarranted or irrational.
There is absolutely no question that SK's strict prevention measures are the cause of that. They were very strict from day one, no doubt because they were hit hard by SARS-CoV-1.
I lived in South Korea 2019-2021. On top of what you said above, they have a very good very intense contact tracing system, in SK the phone/bank/government are pretty inter-connected, it's not difficult for the government to literally hunt down cluster infections and force people into quarantine, and they did. They sent out over sms the exact times and locations of places people who had covid visited, etc, etc. I think contact tracing, Koreans taking it very seriously, wearing masks correctly, actually social distancing kept things under control. Koreans a very good at following instructions when they decide to, and they do it diligently.
Bullshit. People obeyed the first lockdown when everything was chaotic but since then it's been pretty hit and miss. People in the metro with no masks/mask under the nose, flouting of curfews, etc. If i had to guesstimate, around 20-30% of people didn't respect the social distancing and related measures.
As an outsider looking at France's news about vaccination rates and hesitancy, it certainly doesn't look like your fellow citizens trust public health officials. Although, I've never really had the impression that French people trusted authority. Quite the opposite.
But regardless, South Korea acted way quicker than any western democracy to test and trace.
They don't but they obeyed, these are different things. Also France is decently vaccinated, yes some people don't plan to because they distrust government even more after this period.
By comparison, streets in South Korea were reported as being largely empty after around the time of their first COVID death, even though their authorities only suggested people stay home.
Sometimes, public health is in the hands of the public.
Happened here too. With the first mention of lockdown it felt like a handbrake. I frankly don't see what people could've done more. Old people had trouble getting groceries.
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.
That was only the first time, and only after the virus was everywhere. SK reacted much more rapidly when it initially came to them.
Furthermore, Schengen. SK are for all intents and purposes an island, and everything and everyone must come by either boat or plane, which helps with control.
It depends on the disease, covid is immensely correlated with diabetes / metabolic syndrome, which is rampant in many western countries with America at the top.
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.
I happen to believe it's only optics, and frankly am disturbed to find myself in a fully postmodern society where only appearances and posturing matter.
What's not to understand? The numbers in Korea are low because everyone is willing to sacrifice their personal freedom and convenience for the common good. They vigilantly wear masks, socially distance, follow guidelines, and abstain from K-Pop dancing at gyms and running fast on the treadmill when their health departments ask that of them. Americans will happily let more people die if it means they get to go to the gym without a mask. It's really that simple.
I disagree, I think it was 95% being a de-facto island and shutting down international travel without aggressive quarantine upon arrival.
Why, you ask? Well I was living in Hawaii during the pandemic, we're Americans, and we had very similar results through the end of June 2020, nearly extirpated the virus in fact.
Unfortunately the US Military couldn't be compelled to follow restrictions, and a huge outbreak in Pearl Harbor escaped containment and ruined all that hard work.
You don't think it has anything to do with the awful physical and mental health of Americans, as opposed to not following the rules? And mind you, I'm not in American but in another western nation where I've observed with my own eyes that people have followed all the stupid rules, regardless of enthusiasm, but they respected them, and the outcome has been just as disproportionately bad.
I spent last December in London and saw scant respect for the rules during the second wave. A minority of people wore masks, and few of those wore them properly. I was invited to a few house parties and festive gatherings.
Then I spent January in Paris IIIe where mask compliance was much better, but the streets and supermarkets were heaving before the daily curfew. Squeezing down aisles to buy supplies for dinner. Friends publicly complied with the rules but had big house parties every weekend.
I departed in shock and with an understanding of the European case numbers. There was no discipline, everyone seemed too fed up and bored to care anymore. Abstract anonymous others be damned.
Returning to zeroth world east Asia was a relief. Everyone, and I mean 100% of everyone, wears masks properly.
That originally happened before any official requirement. People go out when there are zero cases, but when a community transmission case happens the streets go quiet for a while, cases disappear, then nearly normal life resumes.
While health might play a part, discipline, a sense of community respect, and a competent administration seem far more important.
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 group exercise classes at fitness clubs cannot exceed 120 beats per minute."
It's possible to jog at that speed if you try hard - I've been doing some low heart rate training recently and can get down to 11m/km while still jogging, and I'm pretty tall so the biomechanics are weird.
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].
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.
> They used up all the stock for the second shot for initial dose to inflate the numbers and hit the goal.
They are not inflating the numbers, just fulfilling their own promises. The government was pretty much clear in its original plan that it will be initial doses. Initial doses alone do have a positive effect on the reproduction number so this is to be expected.
> We're short on vaccines, which is why the number of people fully vaccinated has stagnated for weeks since June.
If you've got paid and paid your rent in the same week you are not short on money (at least in the common sense), just that your expense is not uniform across weeks. The governmental vaccination plan has been very much non-uniform, partly exaggerated by the fact that SK has a very strong vaccine supply chain and everyone seemingly wants to be vaccinated given a chance.
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.
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.
My gym is in a converted warehouse. Probably 30' ceiling at least, so it's mostly open air. Lots of fans and HVAC so the air is constantly moving. It was closed from March - June of 2020. Reopened in late June with masking and social distancing as per local rules. There was an exception to the masking rule "while exercising" so basically nobody wore a mask in the gym. I returned to my every other day habit, my workout takes about 90 minutes and then I sit in the sauna for 20 minutes and then shower.
I'm not aware of any local cases linked specifically to gyms, so it seemed to work out fine.
> 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.
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 to put this sign up”
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.
Semantics. Do you have a right to threaten a group of people voluntarily exercising together? Of course not.
Since you do not have that right, You cannot delegate that right to another, which makes any claims of "democratically" derived law, invalid.
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.
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.
> "...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."
yes please.
meanwhile in LA, at least half the people are still wearing masks outside. whatever floats your boat, but i can't help but shake my head each time. if folks really wanted the mask for more than performative reasons, they'd wear it at home and at friends homes. how many maskers actually did that? probably less than 1%, even though that's where it would have the most effect. waiting for that study, though i don't have high hopes since it'd counter the prevailing mediopolitical narrative.
