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Comment by metalliqaz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.

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.

Edit: I’m not a doctor, I could be wrong.

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