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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

It's not just gyms. It's underground bars, hair salons, hot stone yoga joints, and all kinds of things.

While the hair salons were closed, my wife's hairdresser was texting her every three days to get her into her underground makeshift totally illegal hair place.

And slightly realated, quarantines don't work when people aren'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.

Just what the world needs: People who make poor health decision driving around the country.

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Quarantine without a cage works pretty well if you aren't forced to choose between societal health and financial ruin.

Sex workers are in high gear right now, too. People are sad and lonely.

"Totally illegal underground makeshift hair place"

I'm confused, if the participants wear a mask, will the virus be transmitted or not?

Masks aren't 100% effective so being in close contact with someone for such a long time (a haircut for women can take much longer than a typical trim for men) carries a high risk of transmission from an asymptomatic carrier.

I find this to be one of the funniest supposed differences between genders.

I'm trans male, so I've gotten both female and male haircuts. Female haircuts generally took much less time. Put the hair in a ponytail, one snip, tidy up a little. Even a buzz cut takes a little bit longer. It's also much easier to cut long hair yourself than short hair, and people with long hair can go much longer between hair cuts. It took me a while to realize that men's haircut needs to be cut every 2-3 months instead of the once or maybe twice a year I was used to.

Hair dying definitely takes longer, but it seems that can be done at home easily as well.

Thanks for voicing this! I've been cutting hair as a hobby for years (it's funny, I got questioned a lot why I felt it was worth cutting my own hair and suddenly with the onset of the pandemic a lot of friends of mine are much more interested in the hobby), and the number of folks that think female haircuts are more involved/difficult is astounding. Unless long hair is very overgrown and needs to be relayered, it's generally really simple to trim it. Men's haircuts are short enough that small mistakes are glaringly obvious, and the haircuts need regular maintenance. My partner had some trepidation when I first cut her hair, but since then she's recommended me to her friends (well, pre-pandemic at least). She did short hair for a while and found the constant maintenance to be a huge pain.

It's not a binary answer. It may be transmitted but the odds are much lower than without masks.

> I'm confused, if the participants wear a mask, will the virus be transmitted or not?

Well, if it's an illegal place what are the odds they follow CDC protocol?

Just open things up with strict masks / disinfectant / distancing rules and heavy fines for violators.

I'm confused, if the participants wear a mask, will the virus be transmitted or not?

For some, it's not about whether the virus is transmitted or not, it's about the moral implications of deliberately violating the law.

But considering these underground places aren't licensed, regulated, or inspected, I expect they're more risky than a regular place. There's very good health and sanitation reasons that hair cutting places are regulated in the first place.

That's roughly equivalent to asking "if someone drives drunk, will they kill someone else or not?" Many times, they won't hurt anyone, but I hope it's not controversial that driving drunk is still extremely dangerous.

Today I learned that getting a haircut with a mask on is equivalent to driving drunk, but protesting or going to a grocery store with a mask on is not.

No one said anything remotely close to that.

You concluded your comment with:

> but I hope it's not controversial that driving drunk is still extremely dangerous.

Which _implies_ that you perceive "haircut with a mask on" to be similarly dangerous.

If my understanding is wrong, please correct me!

It implies that they are analogous, not that they are similarly dangerous.

What evidence from the US can you present that people will universally wear masks or that they'd wear them correctly? It's far easier to accept that they won't correctly wear masks and this path of exploration fails at step 0.

Based on some cases in Switzerland, transmission is unlikely in this setting.

> And slightly realated, quarantines don't work when people aren't actually quarantined.

Which is an excellent point, which may make some wonder if it was realistic to try in the first place. It's like imagine if the US govt forced everyone to lose weight and then was shocked that people were hoarding ding dongs in the underground market. "How dare those illegal ding dong hoarders break the law!"

If we're going to make laws that are fundamentally against human nature (see also drug prohibition laws, which is also has parallels to TFA), we shouldn't be surprised that some people don't follow these rules.

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