What you have described is a ban. It may not be a ban with criminal penalties, but “an additional sentence” in the official guidelines together with “social expectations that will reduce the amount people talk” is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about a ban on talking.
EDIT: Okay, I talked myself out of this. There is indeed a difference between a ban and a strong suggestion, and I’ll allow that you intended to describe the latter.
The strength of my reaction was based on the fact that COVID-tide has already been extremely damaging to people’s social lives, with many deleterious downstream effects, and inhibiting talking in trains is proposing to inflict even more damage just to shave off a handful of micro-covids. I don’t think this tradeoff is remotely worth it.
Even if the difference would only been between ban and suggestion, focusing on unnecessary talking is different then focusing on all talking.
Shaving off micro-covids through easy means you need to do less lockdowns and thus create less damage to people’s social lives. Lockdowns are the cost of bad policy to reduce COVID-19.
What you have described is a ban. It may not be a ban with criminal penalties, but “an additional sentence” in the official guidelines together with “social expectations that will reduce the amount people talk” is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about a ban on talking.
EDIT: Okay, I talked myself out of this. There is indeed a difference between a ban and a strong suggestion, and I’ll allow that you intended to describe the latter.
The strength of my reaction was based on the fact that COVID-tide has already been extremely damaging to people’s social lives, with many deleterious downstream effects, and inhibiting talking in trains is proposing to inflict even more damage just to shave off a handful of micro-covids. I don’t think this tradeoff is remotely worth it.
Even if the difference would only been between ban and suggestion, focusing on unnecessary talking is different then focusing on all talking.
Shaving off micro-covids through easy means you need to do less lockdowns and thus create less damage to people’s social lives. Lockdowns are the cost of bad policy to reduce COVID-19.