Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition

There is a crossfit gym that I pass by every morning on the way to work. It is full, and never stopped during this pandemic. Even at 7AM, it is full of patrons.<p>I would call the &quot;proper authorities&quot;, but since there is a State Police car parked outside every morning, and he is in there working out, just like before the pandemic, I doubt calling anyone would do anything.<p>Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is really strange that people feel they have to go work out in groups. Or get together, or go to bars. I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.

Unlike actual prohibition, the social agreement behind &quot;lockdowns&quot; is subject to time contingencies. The activities considered &quot;essential&quot; grow as time passes. While there are nominal categories of &quot;essential&quot; defined by community&#x2F;political leaders, that contract depends on agreement. Since each person&#x27;s conception of &quot;essential&quot; is different, as time passes &quot;essential&quot; grows exponentially instead of linearly.

While trying to buy workout equipment off craig&#x27;s list I was solicited twice to join &quot;speakeasy&quot; gyms. They had ads for a bunch of gear and when I inquired they sent me a detailed response on working out in their private gym. One was a large neighborhood garage that offered solo time by the hour, one was a shutdown normal gym. Pretty expensive too!

It&#x27;s not just gyms. It&#x27;s underground bars, hair salons, hot stone yoga joints, and all kinds of things.<p>While the hair salons were closed, my wife&#x27;s hairdresser was texting her every three days to get her into her underground makeshift totally illegal hair place.<p>And slightly realated, quarantines don&#x27;t work when people aren&#x27;t actually quarantined. There was an article in the newspaper last week or the week before about all the people from California driving into Nevada to get their hair done.<p>Just what the world needs: People who make poor health decision driving around the country.

I think a lot of people in this discussion are pitting the argument at people prioritizing their individual choices over the collective health of the community. I think that is a very singular framing from one side. A lot of people I know just believe that the virus itself is not as deadly as the reaction warrants. The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn&#x27;t nothing and warrants action but probably not 40M people unemployed and possible national depression. The fact is if your under 30 you have a better chance of being hit by lightning then dying of Covid. It&#x27;s pretty rational for someone to understand that and make personal choices without feeling like they&#x27;re causing real danger to the community.

I think it is a bit unfortunate that the conversation has completely derailed. The article wanted to talk about prohibition and how it doesn&#x27;t work (it just makes the product unregulated and sometimes dangerous, either it be a gym or drugs), and the discussion here seems to go on and on about mask wearing and social distancing. I&#x27;m sure we&#x27;ve all seen this discussion before.

so many comments arguing about what everyone in aggregate is morally obligated to abstain from or morally permitted to partake in. meanwhile the article itself is just about what people end up doing. &quot;the government closed the gyms. lots of people want to exercise together and&#x2F;or with expensive bulky equipment so they make illegal gyms.&quot; no amount of ethics lawyering is going to change this<p>honestly I think the phased reopenings are partly to blame, once you say &quot;this is important enough, that isn&#x27;t&quot; everyone wants to do their things and disparage other people&#x27;s things. if they closed the gyms here again, I&#x27;d find an illegal one. if they closed the restaurants, or the churches, or the schools, I wouldn&#x27;t care. but for the people who derive existential fulfillment from their religion, or can&#x27;t tolerate taking care of their children 24&#x2F;7, or [insert reason why people care about restaurants, I honestly don&#x27;t understand the upside anymore], my desire to go to my gym is selfish and wrong but their need for their thing is inherently good and right<p>not to mention the fact that most of the country isn&#x27;t locked down, and there&#x27;s no internal borders, and most people didn&#x27;t take lockdowns seriously after the first month or two of kumbaya we&#x27;re all in this together stuff anyway. so your individual actions wouldn&#x27;t even move the needle. there&#x27;s a continuum between the hypervigilent closed societies where one person gets it and they shut down the city, and the endemic countries where it&#x27;s already everywhere anyway so the best you can do is mitigate risk to a tolerable level and go on with your life. new zealand, south korea, taiwan vs. mexico, india, brazil. we&#x27;re with india and brazil<p>and I don&#x27;t think it could have gone any other way. americans are suspicious and callous toward their countrymen and deathly allergic to being told what to do. for better or worse, it&#x27;s just in our blood. gotta make the best of it

Where I live gyms have been open for some time. There&#x27;s been no outbreaks at fitness facilities thus far in my state. I have friends in various countries in Europe who also lift regularly and their fitness facilities have been open for months with no issues.<p>As always, a dose of perspective is necessary.

I saw an engineering services company I know of post a new job position for a &quot;care coordinator&quot; to babysit their employees kids, at work, while the employees work. My first thought was, isn&#x27;t that a daycare? How is it different in the eyes of the law? Edited- spelling

Bad policies deserve to be violated.<p>&gt; Please consider reporting the details to the appropriate authorities<p>No, on the contrary I&#x27;m encouraging people to go out and resume their normal activities.

Working out in a mask is very tough. It is a difficulty enhancement. I dance in a mask at a pace similar to jogging and that is hard enough. I wouldn&#x27;t want to try to do a full workout that way. That would be the first order to get ignored.<p>Is there a way to work out safely? Complete air replacement and surface disinfection. That can realistically only be done outdoors.<p>As a club kid who refuses to grow up, I bring my professional club lights and a mobile DJ speaker to the park to dance with a friend. She has a much harder time coping with isolation and it helps her. It is a system for events of 50-100 people, so it is loud enough to mimic the experience. I would actually be OK with us both wearing Bluetooth headphones like my JBL BT Reflect Mini, which are robust enough to wear while dancing and doing crazy head moves, but a club speaker sounds different because of the reverb from the surrounding environment.<p>We still wear masks despite not touching and being completely outdoors. We do not need to according to laws of physics, but not doing so would contribute to the attitude that masks are optional. They are not optional. As much as I trust my friend and she trusts me, there is no way to know with certainty we can not infect each other after a day of interaction with other people.<p>One way to setup a safe workout would be to use the gym&#x27;s parking lot and set it up with gym flooring and 10x10&#x27; canopies. Portable patio heaters would keep the person warm when warm weather ends. They are expensive, but one way to solve that would be to setup a solar array and use electric heaters.<p>Another friend who is a Zumba instructor is hosting classes in a park&#x27;s parking lot. That works for her and her students and it is safe.

Ironically, months of lockdown away from gym and weight gain has increased my risk for lethal covid outcomes. Though looking forward to cheap surplus sales.

I can certainly understand people’s need to continue their exercise routine. This is for their physical and mental health. As long as they keep the precaution in place, whip down and clean up and social distancing.<p>For me I’ve canceled the gym membership and taking up biking. It has been working out great. Discovered a lot more biking trials around the area. Got plenty of sua shine and vitamin D along the way.

I&#x27;m curious to check my ethics. I&#x27;m in Colorado. Currently climbing gyms are open, limited capacity, with masks. I&#x27;m currently planning for winter. My gut says in 6-8 weeks with schools + flu season starting there&#x27;s good chance of either shut down of gyms again or just too much risk for me.<p>So I&#x27;ve been looking for private commercial space. I already have a personal wall need to move it indoors.<p>My question is what others think of the ethics of expanding from just myself to trying to get 5-10 people onboard with a 501c7 social group to lower costs and build more walls in a private space. Only allow one person in at a time - mask-less (or closed loop groups for instance me and my climbing partner are in a 2 person closed loop).<p>I&#x27;m currently trying to look at the last order to see if that&#x27;s legal.<p>but now with this thread I&#x27;m questioning the ethics and curious what others think. Besides the obvious unequal privilege that I can afford this luxury.

I started toying around with the idea of building something out for a gym sharing idea. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gymlender.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gymlender.com</a>

Personally, I&#x27;m less concerned about gyms. People in gyms are adults and can theoretically stay 6-ft away from each other and wear a mask. I&#x27;ve seen high-impact classes like kick-boxing being held outside in parks for better airflow. Driving activities underground however, has well understood unintended consequences of causing violence and disregard of health rules, as we know from prohibition in the 20&#x27;s and the drug war since the 70&#x27;s.<p>The uniquely American issue, is with bars and clubs being closed. In the land of big houses, everyone knows someone with a bar in their backyard or basement. Keeping bars closed now, when everyone is fed up with the social isolation (sorry, Zoom doesn&#x27;t cut it) just means actual underground speakeasies serving alcohol aka house parties. Where dedicated gym rats <i>aren&#x27;t</i> drinking alcohol at the same time they&#x27;re at the gym (it hurts gainz), and are <i>can</i> be more responsible for their actions, people on alcohol <i>can&#x27;t</i>. I&#x27;m not saying that to excuse drunk people&#x27;s behaviors, what I&#x27;m saying is that trying to get drunk people to stay 6-ft apart and wear a mask is an exercise in futility.<p>Since people are gonna be drinking anyway, <i>especially</i> during a pandemic, and a recession, and in the face of great uncertainty, <i>and</i> on the cusp of a presidential election, what&#x27;s needed is to <i>open</i> the bars, but require patrons scan-in via phone app using the bluetooth-based contact tracing (PEPP-PT), or else face suspension of liquor license. By making it required at bars, you get around some of the privacy issues since those that don&#x27;t want to, can just not go to bars. Using bluetooth-based tracing gets around issues of using GPS-based tracking, and also helps amplify the effectiveness of an under-funded contact tracing corps by providing a technology based solution.<p>This is imperfect, but perfect is the enemy of the good, and even done imperfectly, contact tracing can very successfully drive Re (the local effective value calculated from a diseases&#x27; R0) down below 1, at which point the disease doesn&#x27;t continue to spread and the pandemic can be controlled. For a disease like COVID-19 with an R0 of 2.5, it doesn&#x27;t take too much to drive it down.

I&#x27;m no fan of lockdowns, but comparisons to the prohibition of alcohol in America are appeals to political mythology. You may argue it didn&#x27;t work to the extent some have wanted it to, but it did produce &quot;positive&quot; results on almost every notable metric other than political satisfaction. By some measures alcohol consumption only recovered to pre-prohibition levels in the 1960s.<p>In the big scheme of things it&#x27;s just not a good example of anything relating to effectiveness of government imposed restrictions.

I had been going to legal gyms for two months. The intense focus on hygiene seems to be working since none of the 600 outbreaks inmy state has been traced to a gym.

The responses here are precious. Gym dudes: &quot;leave me alone.&quot; Non gym dudes: &quot;you&#x27;re going to kill us all by doing deadlifts.&quot; FWIIW in the interests of full disclosure, I am thoroughly a gym dude, but have my own equipment and a terrible case of misanthropy, so I&#x27;ve been working out at home for years.<p>I wonder how the paranoiacs who think deadlifters are going to cause mass death mentally deal with the facts on the ground in Sweden. They seem to be doing fine; all they did was prevent large gatherings; no masks, no shut down, yet 4x better covid death rate than, say, Massachusetts, which is still locked down as if we&#x27;re in the black death. Nobody ever talks about Sweden, I guess because they appear to have gotten it right, making fools of most of the rest of the West.

I know of one &quot;secret gym&quot; that&#x27;s extremely well ventilated, everyone wears masks, and everyone is socially distanced. They don&#x27;t do things that require spots, etc. I think it&#x27;s pretty safe. Only 6 people are allowed in at one time.

That&#x27;s fascinating, and I had wondered if it were happening. I guess I was right. Due to the timing of the last 6 months or so, I haven&#x27;t been making it to the gym as much. I started focussing more on mountain biking, I broke my hand, then my clavicle, traveled to Japan, and then the pandemic showed up.<p>With all this more focused time during lockdown, I was tempted to buy my own equipment and toyed with the idea of letting some friends come use it, it got me thinking about the legalities and liabilities of that kind of thing.<p>If we go back into lockdown, I&#x27;ll definitely be buying my own equipment. I do powerlifting, so bodyweight and a few dumbells don&#x27;t really cut it.

In ancient Greek army, they had a death penalty for losing your shield, the same as desertion. There was no such penalty for losing your helmet or armor. Why ? Because they fought in a phalanx, and a soldier losing his shield endangered not only himself, but also his companion on the left.<p>Fun fact: all Greek troops were named after the type of shield they used.<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;acoup.blog&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;17&#x2F;new-acquisitions-hoplite-style-disease-control-march-17-2020&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;acoup.blog&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;17&#x2F;new-acquisitions-hoplite-style...</a>

Jesus. All HN covid threads read like teenage internet trolls have taken over. No sources for claims and full of outrageus anecdotes. In my country its usually people living off the state that comment like this.

We haven&#x27;t evolved to constantly evaluate our actions against things we cannot see right in front of us (in this case a virus). Nothing actually happening during this pandemic is surprising in the least.

&gt;Christina learned that these swole, maskless bros were refugees from big chain gyms like the YMCA and Planet Fitness<p>Seriously doubt anybody described as a &#x27;swole bro&#x27; is coming from Planet Fitness. They&#x27;re pretty heavy on the anti-bro advertising [0] and their business model is more about finding tons of people sign up that rarely actually work out in their gym.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=J1Y4XY8Pl6U" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=J1Y4XY8Pl6U</a>

Anyone supporting Gyms or high-traffic transmission areas right now are clearly narcissistic. If this getting called out is an affront to you, you may need to visit your physician to get diagnosed.

yep, i&#x27;ve been going to a gym + sauna of a friend of mine the whole lockdown. this is a thing :)

The people denying the pandemic (or calling it a &quot;plandemic&quot;), or refusing to wear masks because muh freedoms, or protesting lockdowns are going to be <i>laughed</i> at in history classes for decades. You are unbelievably ignorant, selfish and arrogant. You are the <i>reason</i> this stuff needs to be enforced in the first place, because too many people completely lack empathy and critical thinking ability.

This seems incredibly dangerous. Are the speakeasy gyms requiring negative COVID tests? Are they doing temperature screenings upon entry? How diligently are they sanitizing equipment? How well ventilated are these various areas?<p>Why are people ignoring all of these risks, what kind of threat model do they have?

Most commenters here seem to implicitly accept the framing of the discussion around stay-at-home orders as some sort of tradeoff between different values – for example, saving lives versus protecting the economy, or freedom versus safety. But has anyone considered whether stay-at-home orders have actually saved lives overall?<p>The UN estimated [0][1] that between 83 million and 132 million people will go hungry around the world because of anti-COVID measures. Some of these people will die from starvation or malnutrition. Some of them will die from other preventable health problems later in life.<p>According to the Stop TB Partnership, a three-month lockdown followed by a gradual return to normal over 10 months could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of tuberculosis and 1.4 million deaths between 2020 and 2025. [2][3]<p>It&#x27;s also plausible that lockdowns could lead to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from each of HIV&#x2F;AIDS [4], malaria [5], and several other diseases, though I&#x27;m not as confident about these numbers.<p>I am sure someone will be tempted to respond with some variant on &quot;we could have avoided these deaths by tuning the stay-at-home restrictions more competently.&quot; Of course, that&#x27;s true; but the point is that <i>we didn&#x27;t</i>. We never do. Historically, every society that has tried to eliminate &quot;non-essential&quot; jobs through central planning has eventually found that even when the planners operate with the very best of intentions, they still make mistakes. Dealing with one problem causes a cascade of other subtle changes with real, harmful consequences, which are harder to mitigate when people aren&#x27;t allowed to freely choose how to spend their own resources. Meanwhile, problems that are judged to be less important are forgotten, because planners can only focus on a limited number of tasks at one time. Human societies are incredibly complex. Trying to manage them from the top is like developing software using the waterfall model: it would work perfectly with perfect planning, but we all know how that works out in real life.<p>On a personal level: a relative passed away from cancer recently. Cancer isn&#x27;t a good way to die at the best of times; and I&#x27;ll be honest, she almost certainly would not have survived even with better medical treatment. But if hospitals hadn&#x27;t shut down &quot;elective&quot; and &quot;non-essential&quot; care, she could have gone through a lot less pain and suffering. I am not trying to use this as a bludgeon – I understand there are also a lot of people who have suffered greatly from COVID, and of course, we should make policy based on what&#x27;s best for everyone rather than a small number of anecdotes. But when I read comments saying things like &quot;I don&#x27;t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people&quot;... let&#x27;s just say that I don&#x27;t know how to respond to that without severely violating HN guidelines.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.unicef.org&#x2F;resources&#x2F;sofi-2020&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.unicef.org&#x2F;resources&#x2F;sofi-2020&#x2F;</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;africa.cgtn.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;17&#x2F;who-urges-world-not-to-focus-entirely-on-covid-19-at-the-expense-of-other-crises&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;africa.cgtn.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;17&#x2F;who-urges-world-not-to-fo...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stoptb.org&#x2F;assets&#x2F;documents&#x2F;news&#x2F;Modeling%20Report_1%20May%202020_FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stoptb.org&#x2F;assets&#x2F;documents&#x2F;news&#x2F;Modeling%20Repor...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;03&#x2F;health&#x2F;coronavirus-tuberculosis-aids-malaria.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;03&#x2F;health&#x2F;coronavirus-tuberc...</a><p>[4]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;news-room&#x2F;detail&#x2F;11-05-2020-the-cost-of-inaction-covid-19-related-service-disruptions-could-cause-hundreds-of-thousands-of-extra-deaths-from-hiv" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;news-room&#x2F;detail&#x2F;11-05-2020-the-cost-of-...</a><p>[5]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41591-020-1025-y" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41591-020-1025-y</a>

Daily reminder that we have the technology to get society back to normal with cheap 15 minute ‘good-enough’ covid tests that can be manufactured now (millions per day). All we need is competent leadership in government to say ‘go’

Virtually all the people who died of covid were fat[1]. If the military forced everyone to exercise (and diet, but that&#x27;s harder to mandate than exercising) it would have been much more effective than forcing everyone to wear masks. (Masks are still good though.) Most of us are going to get covid even if we stay inside all day (I got it twice) so this should be a wake-up call to be prepared to survive it. Or don&#x27;t, stay overweight and choke on your own blood if you want--that&#x27;s &quot;freedom&quot;.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldobesity.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;obesity-and-covid-19-policy-statement" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldobesity.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;obesity-and-covid-19-polic...</a>

Wow with these comments. You going to the gym is not saving the economy. Yes, we can&#x27;t shut everything down but you&#x27;d think the article was about shutting down grocery stores or the stock market. And by not doing your part, your whole community could be stunted for 2 years. Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you&#x27;re healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. You might be helping your personal economy, but you&#x27;re not helping &quot;the economy&quot;.<p>- give up a few luxuries especially if they involve heavy breathing or eating in close quarters.<p>- Work from home if you can<p>- Socially distance<p>- Wear a mask when you can&#x27;t socially distance<p>- Go to work if you need to. Don&#x27;t go to other people&#x27;s work if you don&#x27;t need to<p>- Support temporary benefits to your fellow citizens as you helpfully avoid going to their place of work.

Under conditions like these, a thriving black market is inevitable.

Prohibition=war on drugs. Funny how few are willing to admit it.

So this is the cause of community spread in the US..

Once one gets past the sexist language like &quot;swole, maskless bros,&quot; there is an interesting idea in the article that a societal risk of long duration prohibitions is the development of shadow economies and contract enforcement mechanisms. I&#x27;m surprised to see such a libertarian POV from NPR.

this thread is a perfect example of why we are so fucked

there is an amazing amount of garbage being said here.<p>wear a mask please.

Did the &quot;shutdown normal gym&quot; mean that patrons would be violating whatever policies forced the gym to shutdown in the first place?<p>If so, that really bothers me. Any excess contagion would endanger everyone, not just the gym users. Please consider reporting the details to the appropriate authorities.<p>EDIT: If someone is inclined to downvote this comment, I&#x27;d be very grateful for a clarification why (comment or DM). I&#x27;m trying to address some problems in my communication style, and I can&#x27;t always infer how I could have done better.

&gt; Her work makes it hard for her to talk to reporters, so we&#x27;re not using her last name<p>Surely if you feel it necessary to omit someones last name you should err on the side of caution and omit their first name too? A fist name narrows a search down significantly.

I can&#x27;t help but chuckle. Soon mob will be running speak-easy gym you will need password to get in. Feds will start running sting operations. Fat Americans will become heroes of the pandemic.

You want to massively decrease the deathrate of COVID? (and death rates in general)<p>Deal with the 40% obesity rate in the US.<p>Death rates are extremely low if you&#x27;re not geriatric or not fat. All the top killers are attributable to being fat and living unhealthy lifestyles. COVID is the scapegoat here.

Lol the shutdowns will fuck us up for a decade.

It’s not even a secret. Outside, in Lake Merritt are roughly 50 people daily working out with weights in the grass. No distancing. No masks. No fuss. No china flu. No china cold.

This timeline sucks

63% of gym memberships go completely unused (Statistic Brain survey of 5,313 American gym members). I don&#x27;t see this as a big thing.

While they’re at it, they should setup some speakeasy urgent care clinics for when they give themselves covid.

Choose your own adventure<p>1. Go to the gym during a pandemic<p>2.a. Your lungs are permanently damaged, with lower lung capacity for life. Your life expectancy is shortened.<p>2.b. You are dead.<p>2.c. You did not develop symptoms.<p>3. You passed on the disease to many people, including your friends and family.<p>4. Everything you wanted to achieve by going to the gym turned out wrong and everyone now thinks you are&#x2F;were a selfish jerk.

As a non-American in a more or less socially unified country, I am really enjoying all the responses from Americans in this thread.

I could never understand the point of a gym. Just a pair of running shoes. Some dumbbells. I picked up slacklining and bosu ball training during the lockdown. Why does one need a &quot;gym&quot; ??

“Fancy fit”, that is brutal haha. Some guy probably spent hours every week painfully doing the right mix of weightlifting, HIT and yoga to achieve that lean but muscular look popular with a certain class of women, probably thinks he looks tough and gets called “fancy”. At some point I’d just embrace being fat.

I see a lot of outdoor gyms in parks and what not. Outdoors is not only safer but also more pleasant. And if it rains a bit running through the rain will give an extra feat you don’t find in regular gyms. Ok, kidding about the rain but I prefer doing my workouts outside the gym when the weather permits. Calistenics aka exercises with the weight of your body are quite efficient and don’t make one look like an ogre

A lot of this fretting seems to come down to people who are bodybuilder types.<p>You don&#x27;t need to be in a commercial gym to maintain solid functional fitness.<p>You might need to be in a commercial gym to maintain unnatural levels of muscle mass and body weight for bodybuilding &amp; powerlifting. Even that stuff can still be done in a home gym setting though given an equipment budget.<p>This is not a health argument, it&#x27;s not even proven bodybuilding is healthy.. excess mass from body building &amp; powerlifting tends to have negative effects later in life due to the metabolic strain of the extra weight.<p>Just deal with the idea you can stay super fit but you might not weigh as much.<p>Gymnasts, rock climbers, etc.. are all ultra elite strength athletes that get by largely with bodyweight exercise &amp; minimal equipment. They just don&#x27;t have abnormally high body mass.<p>Outside of these arguments of &quot;I&#x27;m too big and strong to get enough home equipment to keep my gains Bro!&quot; it mostly seems to come down to narcissism.. desire to be seen in the gym and to socialize in the gym. If that&#x27;s such an important part of being in the gym it&#x27;s no different than not being able to handle avoiding bars.<p>You can still have a training partner for spotting... just make sure it&#x27;s the same training partner and you both keep good behavior outside of workouts and it&#x27;ll be pretty safe.

I don&#x27;t get it. Unless you&#x27;re training for a very specific purpose (like an MMA fight or football season), why do you need specific indoor gym equipment? Shelter in place orders are largely lifted, so you can workout outside: run, do pull ups on a tree branch, ride a bike, lift a heavy stone, do an outdoor yoga class, etc. Hell, you only need maybe a 6&#x27; x 6&#x27; area for a perfectly effective body weight routine, even inside.<p>I get that some of this can be related to body dysmorphia, but that&#x27;s probably a tiny corner case. Is it the thrill of doing something &quot;illegal&quot;&#x2F;dangerous? Is it more denial about the impact of COVID? Hustlers trying to capitalize on a crisis?<p>Edit: based on some of the replies, it looks like it boils down to a sense of entitlement: people wanting to stick to their routines without a care of putting others at risk.