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.
Or such is my observation.
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.
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?
Democracies without explicit limitations on government power too often just become tyranny by the majority.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't understand, I really don't. I anybody can explain, I'd very much appreciate.
It's also "optics" which is mainly psychological.
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.
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 does look ridiculous, though!
[1] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccinatio...
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.
My personal take on gyms would be that well ventilated ones are likely quite safe, but the most are probably not sufficiently well ventilated.
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.
I hear california is considering banning birthday cakes with more than 5 candles because the wind to blow them out can spread covid
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.
