I’m on the fence with something like this. Covid-19 isn’t turning out to be nearly as scary as it looked like it might be in December (at least based on rumors coming out of wuhan). I still feel like there’s information at a high level (security clearance type stuff) that we don’t get to see, and so have to assume the stay stay at home orders are still founded.

That said, people in the US can only maintain this type of social distancing so long. A lot of people are reaching a breaking point. And if some speakeasy gyms help prevent a massive ‘fuck it’ style rave, then it might be a lesser of 2 evils kind of thing.

That ethic is really counterintuitive to me. I'd be really interested if you want to expound on it a bit.

E.g., Are there limits to where you'd apply it? Does it apply to laws that you (personally) do want to have vigorously enforced?

Most people can come to decisions like this without the mediation of a legal system. In this particular case, I don't think that ratting on gym owners who are trying to salvage their livelihoods by serving willing customers is worthy of reporting to the authorities.

Never thought I'd see the day where Americans turn in their neighbors to the state.

We can have a discussion about whether this particular rule really does benefit everyone, but clearly the ones that do should be respected, otherwise what's the point?

For context, from the SBA’s advocacy page (2019):

“ U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of the goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States. Across the 16 years from 1998 to 2014, the small business share of GDP has fallen from 48.0 percent to 43.5 percent. Over the same period, the amount of small business GDP has grown by about 25 percent in real terms, or 1.4 percent annually. However, real GDP for large businesses has grown faster, at 2.5 percent annually.”

I have not critically considered whether or not these statistics are the best indicator of the most effective contribution to the economy (or society).

https://advocacy.sba.gov/2019/01/30/small-businesses-generat...

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 middle of a pandemic is stupid and irresponsible. I don’t do it.

I also don’t want men with guns stopping those that do. You can’t fix (or stop) stupid with a Glock and a uniform, which is what TFA is illustrating.

No it doesn't.

It could mean code enforcement, or the health department.

It’s not men carrying clipboards. They’re carrying pistols, and they have machine guns in the trunk of the vehicle they drove there.

DO NOT call the state to solve your problems.

If you wouldn’t solve the problem by taking a gun over there, don’t call someone else to do that.

This seems like simply a dodge or dismissal of the legitimate criticism that breaking most of society’s rules should not cause an armed opponent to suddenly appear. It’s unreasonable and uncivilized and frequently results in the small-rule-breaker being physically abused or even murdered, especially if they aren’t white.

Your casual dismissal of these consequences suggests that you are never targeted by these people. For that I am glad. I hope everyone can be as callous about the consequences for minor rule breaking one day.

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.

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.

Yes it absolutely is. I have no idea why you think otherwise. The right to "free expression" is conditional as well. We prohibit certain "peaceful assembly" and "free expression" every single day and have done so for centuries. The classical example: you do not have the "right to free expression" to go into a crowded place and falsely yell "fire", because that would be a public danger. Similarly, going to a gym during a pandemic causes a public danger. "Right to peaceful assembly" doesn't apply.

"Peaceful assembly to work out" is in no way similar to "peaceful assembly for protesting". It's ridiculous of you to claim otherwise. It's so ridiculous that I can only believe you're trolling or trying to make an argument in bad faith.

Qatar has 44000 cases per 1m pop and 69 deaths per 1m.

That is not much higher than flu.

That makes Covid 5.6 times more deadly than the flu.

But, the Covid numbers here are from a complete lockdown, where people are social distancing, wearing masks, schools are closed, everyone is working from home if possible, etc. And even with those level of precautions, it is at best 5.6 times deadlier.

That's why the estimate from the CDC is that Covid is 10 times deadlier than the flu.

The other thing is, this only measures immediate death. But there are unknown long term risk. Other type of SARS virus are known to cause long term issues to people that recovered from it. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the case for Covid but it could, and we don't know yet.

The last problem is mutations are possible. There's already one known mutation that makes it even more contagious. And the more the virus spreads, the more likely it mutates as well. So containment is important for that as well.

Now, that's the risk of it from the data today. You can decide that it is a risk worth taking or not. That's kind of a personal thing. But it is absolutely much higher than the flu.

So our current understanding is that COVID-19 is both more deadly and more infectious.

This does take into account infection rates, it's absolutely relevant and it's the big reason for Covid being deadlier, because it is more contagious.

So from the data, we see that with social distancing, lock down, and all that, it still infects and kills 5.6 times more people than the flu does every year given the measures taken for the flu, which is to have some amount of the population vaccinated. Thus assumed that without any protections, it would be even worse, possibly killing around 620k people per year. That would put it above cancer and up there with hearth disease as the number one cause of death per year.

And that's precisely why we're hoping for a vaccine. So that we can hopefully get the infections down and stop it's crazy contagion rate to manageable numbers that result on much less deaths per year, and doesn't force us to continue with the more challenging measures for limiting the spread of the virus.

What does Qatar do to a person who is confirmed infected? Does the same action occur to someone with the flu?

What is Qatar asking it's population to do differently today, compared to this time a year ago? Does that have any meaningful impact on transmission rates?

I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.

> It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place.

The explicit comparison to the flu doesn't really seem to hold, since the conditions applied to the infected aren't equal. If those carrying the flu were subject to the same conditions as those carrying this covid-19, the comparison would hold up a lot better.

> I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.

Mortality numbers as a % of tested peoples are hugely variable due to the differences in testing between nations.

Mortality numbers as a % of the population (deaths per 100k/1m) make for good comparisons, and unless the nation is engaging in outright deception, those numbers are reasonable to use as a comparison.

According to https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality the USA has 52.52 deaths per 100k. In line with your previous, Qatar has 6.94 deaths per 100k.

10x more people have died in the USA vs in Qatar. What's going on?

Look - my country no one bothers to observe measures and our system is far from overloaded.

I think that a lot of influential l people threw too much social capital on stay at home and stuff like this and now they just can't handle the situation if covid is less dangerous than thought.

I think we are in the sink cost fallacy.

There are 10x more deaths as a percentage of the population in the USA than in Qatar. The number of tests / positive cases is not relevant to that number.

Why bother treating any sick person if this is your position? The healthcare system would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier if we just "frontloaded some death" for everyone who gets seriously ill.

When the actions to prevent these people from dying, uh "just earlier than they would have," are as simple as wearing a mask and social distancing, it is unethical to not do so.

I'm not gaining muscle mass but I'm having absolutely no trouble whatsoever maintaining it at home with exercise bands and calisthenics. It's a tiny, tiny price to pay for helping keep my community safe.

I would sacrifice the gym for the rest of my life if it meant adding even a year of life to a single person. Sentient existence is immeasurably more valuable.

It shows:

39,000,000 – 56,000,000 flu illnesses

18,000,000 – 26,000,000 flu medical visits

410,000 – 740,000 flu hospitalizations

24,000 – 62,000 flu deaths

Which is actually kind of on the higher side for the flu season. They attribute that most likely on the increased testing happening this year due to people getting tested for Covid.

Until you provide overwhelming evidence (because that's what you're up against), you're spreading misinformation.

Seems to me like you're speaking from a feelings position, rather than a facts one.

Total predicted number of excess deaths since 2/1/2020 across the United States:

All causes: 174,930 - 235,728

All causes except COVID-19 : 29,416 - 78,932

> the Wuhan virus

Propaganda pro-tip: If you want people to trust you, suppress the obvious tells.

Perhaps they are an essential worker, and don't have the option to stay at home?

Perhaps they have medical issues that leave them immunocompromised and may require hospitalization, putting them at a high risk of death from exposure to COVID patients?

Perhaps they are unemployed or at risk of unemployment due to pandemic restrictions, and the irresponsible behavior of people who are too cool to do body weight exercises at home could directly harm them by lengthening the time these restrictions are necessary?

"It's none of your business if other people break the law in a way that harms others."

The result is that gyms are an excellent space for spreading COVID-19. And measures that reduce the spread for things like walking around a store are not sufficient to reduce it to a safe level in a gym.

Here is some evidence in the NY Times that counters your argument: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/health/coronavirus-gyms-f...

Researchers have been tracking many superspreading events around the globe, and there seem to be recurring locations no matter what the country. In addition to those we have heard most about, like prisons, food processing plants, and elder care facilities, there have also been numerous large superspreading events at bars, churches, offices, gyms, and shopping centers.

(Note gyms are on the list.)

I'm not expecting society to follow that line of reasoning any time soon, though.

To me it is a matter of goals, when posting.

I seek to learn something and/or share something, and think this is best achieved by replying to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

I find that satisfaction of baiting a stupid post then refuting is short lived.

This post is a good case in point. I don't thinking drawing the analogy helped to educate anyone who read it or establish the appropriate moral obligations of an individual living in a society.

Imo, it is effectively trolling, especially when presented in a one sentence post. Do you think it spawned productive discussion when reading the child discussions?

Once we start comparing and contrasting the two, it becomes a more interesting discussion. I don't think they are strictly equivalent, but am open to a difference of degree and exploring where the line is drawn and why.

Living in a world with other people involves risk, even without covid. Driving anywhere sober, for pleasure or work, puts yourself and others at some level of risk. This is legal and socially accepted, so we know there is some threshold.

Another interesting area of comparison is consent/ acceptance of risk. When I get on the road (or walk down the street) I accept the fact that another vehicle could careen out of control and kill me. In the case of the speakeasy gym, the members presumably are accepting the risk.

This brings up the last area of comparison, second order effects. Even if the two Speakeasy gym members consent to take a risk, what about 3rd parties that could be harmed. what are the chances a 3rd party is harmed, and how do we typically handle comparable 3rd party risks? Airborne particulate is estimated to cause 200k premature US deaths per year. How does the particulate from a road trip, flight, or web browsing compare?

If we were so inclined we could try to throw some numbers to these.

I'm not entirely sure which part of my comment you're arguing against:

> How is a gymgoer endangering you, if you are staying 6ft from all others, wearing a mask, washing your hands and not touching your face?

Are you saying that as long as the measures you listed are followed, any additional shutdowns required by the local/state government are unreasonable and are okay to ignore?

If instead you're saying that the measures you listed satisfy the local/state requirements for gyms, then I'm confused because I wouldn't expect the gym to be shutdown in the first place.

Yes. How does a government shutdown help me, if I'm already isolated?

If you go to the grocery store or receive deliveries, you're not isolated, and government policy that reduces viral spread benefits you.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html#Spread

What, without evidence of it ever spreading from one person to another in a grocery store, you believe it isn't possible? Is extrapolating the knowledge of how it spreads to the possibility of encountering that situation in a grocery store not viable here? Shall we wait for evidence of spread in every single possible permutation of leaving the house before we consider such an activity potentially dangerous?

I was challenging isolation. I go grocery shopping - I think it can be done safely. But, I wouldn't do it if I lived in some red state full of pandemic deniers with huge spread rates - it's too dangerous. In my area, everyone wears masks, everyone makes sure to social distance, so it's not as much of a risk. But I acknowledge that I'm not isolated, and that was the claim that was made.

We have extensive contract tracing now in every state in the US, and around the world. I would think it wouldn't be that hard to show. Were you able to find any cases?

You failed to answer my previous question: is it impossible to extrapolate knowledge of how the virus spreads, to judge risk of various scenarios?

Do you require evidence from every permutation of possible activity?