South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in response to Covid spike
42 points by jbaudanza 4 years ago | 114 comments- BitwiseFool 4 years ago"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.
- 015a 4 years agoThis 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.
- BitwiseFool 4 years agoThis 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.
- ridaj 4 years agoSome of these weird closures happened around retail fairness concerns. None of it made much sense. https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-lockdown-france-says-pots-an...
- samatman 4 years agoIn 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.
- unilynx 4 years agoIsn't sending a card an alternative to visiting in person (different in the US?)
- harpersealtako 4 years agoIt 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].
[1] http://www.wvdnr.gov/2020News/20news020.shtm
[2] https://wdfw.wa.gov/news/wdfw-closes-recreational-fishing-st...
- Simulacra 4 years agoI was troubled that Walmart and Target remained open, but the local hardware store had to close. Too big to close, perhaps?
- snypher 4 years ago>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...
- beamatronic 4 years agoSurely you are joking about the taped-off greeting cards?
- ridaj 4 years ago
- thrower123 4 years agoOr, you have a reasonable policy on one side, and a batshit crazy policy on the other, so the "compromise" is a half-way batshit crazy policy.
- BitwiseFool 4 years ago
- throwawayboise 4 years agoThere'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.
- nitwit005 4 years agoYep. 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.
- seriousquestion 4 years agoThat's part of it. Another is that they tend to have authoritarian tendencies.
- nitwit005 4 years ago
- yongjik 4 years agoI 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?
- BitwiseFool 4 years agoIn 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?
- yongjik 4 years agoWell, 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.
- spuz 4 years ago> 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.
- throwawayboise 4 years agoClosing the gym means the gym owner cannot earn a living, or pay his rent, or make his loan payments on the gym equipment.
Allowing the gym to remain open with restrictions helps the owner survive until the restrictions can be lifted.
- yongjik 4 years ago
- leppr 4 years agoThis is an arbitrary decision that a proper democratic decision making process would not end up on.
- lifthrasiir 4 years agoIt 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.)
- lifthrasiir 4 years ago
- BitwiseFool 4 years ago
- nszceta 4 years agoA sizable portion of South Koreans still believe in fan death.
- effingwewt 4 years agoI had to look this up as I'd never heard of it before. I don't even know what this makes me more of- sad, or impressed they pulled this off.
- effingwewt 4 years ago
- SllX 4 years agoA 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.
- nostromo 4 years agoThis is why the Bill of Rights is important in the US. I wish we would expand it.
Democracies without explicit limitations on government power too often just become tyranny by the majority.
- leppr 4 years ago> 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".
- SllX 4 years agoDunno 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.
- SllX 4 years ago
- nostromo 4 years ago
- ridaj 4 years agoI 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.
- 4 years ago
- jeofken 4 years agoLet’s keep in mind how crazy the average citizen is. Half are even crazier
- accountLost 4 years agoThat would be the median, not the average (but then it sounds less funny somehow...)
- nostromo 4 years agoSince you opened the door to pedantry… median and mean are both ways of calculating an average.
Usually we mean “mean” when saying “average” because it’s the most common - but not always.
- nostromo 4 years ago
- readflaggedcomm 4 years agoOnly if crazy is normally-distributed.
- accountLost 4 years ago
- 015a 4 years ago
- sugardough 4 years agoSouth 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.
- hntrowaway837 4 years agoOut of 51.7 million people, SK has had about 2000 covid deaths. How could SK have been anywhere near "total medical system collapse"?!
- sugardough 4 years agoWhen 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.
- sofixa 4 years agoIt 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.
- yongjik 4 years agoYou'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.
- hntrowaway837 4 years agoYou don't know what room this exponential growth has. It could near saturation, at we've often seen.
- hntrowaway837 4 years ago
- sugardough 4 years ago
- hntrowaway837 4 years ago
- colordrops 4 years agoI'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.
- iaHN 4 years agoI 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.
- samatman 4 years agoWell, it wasn't.
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.
- codezero 4 years agoWhat's the downside for those people who choose to wear a mask outdoors?
Perhaps they just came from somewhere indoors and want to have an extra barrier to protect them from unconsciously touching their face.
The reason doesn't really matter.
- codezero 4 years ago
- samatman 4 years ago
- ryandrake 4 years agoCome 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.
- colordrops 4 years agoYou 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.
- colordrops 4 years ago
- iaHN 4 years ago
- hntrowaway837 4 years agoSouth 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.
- kube-system 4 years agoThere 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.
- hntrowaway837 4 years agoReally? "no question"? Aren't they also much healthier than, for instance, Americans? 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic, so I've heard recently.
- kube-system 4 years agoYes. 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 they were prepared.
- yongjik 4 years agoAre you going to argue that Americans were much healthier (or, maybe, Koreans were much less healthier) six years ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Middle_East_respiratory_s...
Government response is a critical part of handling these diseases. We just spent a whole year running this experiment globally.
- kube-system 4 years ago
- hntrowaway837 4 years ago
- dubcanada 4 years agoIt's preventative rather then after the fact. Also covid restrictions do wonders for flu prevention!
- thinkingemote 4 years agoIt'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.
- hntrowaway837 4 years agoI 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.
- hntrowaway837 4 years ago
- pie420 4 years agoWhat'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.
- samatman 4 years agoI 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.
- hntrowaway837 4 years agoYou 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.
- Gosper 4 years agoWe have completely different observations.
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.
- Gosper 4 years ago
- samatman 4 years ago
- kube-system 4 years ago
- bluescrn 4 years ago"No, the BPM is actually really low, it was written using demi-semi-hemi-demi-semiquavers"
- colejohnson66 4 years agoI was thinking this also. Is it half notes at 200 bpm, or quarter notes at 100?
- oehtXRwMkIs 4 years agoSince most mainstream songs these days have a distinct beat, does that even matter? You just count how many beats you hear in a minute.
- oehtXRwMkIs 4 years ago
- colejohnson66 4 years ago
- nkozyra 4 years agoExcuse me while I quickly remix every top-40 120+bpm track to 119.
- nielsbot 4 years agoEver heard of Chopped and Screwed? That, but for dance music.
- ggsp 4 years agoMoombahton?
- ggsp 4 years ago
- kube-system 4 years ago~~Gangnam~~ Pyongyang style.
- nielsbot 4 years ago
- blakesterz 4 years agoThe 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 group exercise classes at fitness clubs cannot exceed 120 beats per minute."
- agubelu 4 years agoThat's crazy. Are they going to limit the amount of weight you can lift as well?
- halfdan 4 years ago6 kilometers per hour is a fast walk. That's wild.
- lampington 4 years agoIt'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.
It does look ridiculous, though!
- lampington 4 years ago
- agubelu 4 years ago
- briefcomment 4 years agoI 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...
- lifthrasiir 4 years agoParadoxical 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.
- sugardough 4 years agoThey 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.
- lifthrasiir 4 years ago> 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.
- lifthrasiir 4 years ago
- sugardough 4 years ago
- lifthrasiir 4 years ago
- metalliqaz 4 years agoThey 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.
- daveslash 4 years agoI 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. :-)
- nicoburns 4 years agoFWIW, 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.
- fy20 4 years agoIf 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.
- fy20 4 years ago
- nicoburns 4 years ago
- taurath 4 years agoI’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”
- glennvtx 4 years agoIt 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.
- metalliqaz 4 years agobut 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.
- metalliqaz 4 years ago
- glennvtx 4 years ago
- t-writescode 4 years agoOne 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.
- daveslash 4 years ago
- dzhiurgis 4 years agoWhy gyms have music to begin with? 90% people using their headphones anyway! External music is super annoying if you try to listen to audiobook.
- lifthrasiir 4 years agoThe article is oblivious of the context that this provision only applies to group exercises.
- lifthrasiir 4 years ago
- Black101 4 years agolol... I wonder if they have less crazy laws in North Korea...
- gotoeleven 4 years agocostco has removed relish from their hot dog condiment dispensers .. to fight covid
I hear california is considering banning birthday cakes with more than 5 candles because the wind to blow them out can spread covid
- aunty_helen 4 years agoSome of the covid cost cutting takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics to justify. But really it's just cost cutting.
- sschueller 4 years agoIsn'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.
- kube-system 4 years agoDoes 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...
- kube-system 4 years ago
- sschueller 4 years ago
- eappleby 4 years ago
- phendrenad2 4 years agoMy town is ripping up the municipal flower beds on the sides of roads because sneezes (due to pollen allergies) can carry COVID.
- aunty_helen 4 years ago
- throwawaysea 4 years agoIf 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.
- clairity 4 years ago> "...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.
- clairity 4 years ago