Are EV owners more scared of COVID-19 than ICE owners?

That was my thinking.

I suspect you aren't going to see many grocery clerks, nurse's aids, pharmacy techs and so on affording a new EV. I've only seen one EV at the local fire station, Audio e-tron; they drive pickup trucks and gas SUVs.

On top of that, where are you going to go if everything is shut down except essential services? Where you going to get the money?

 

This makes sense to me. I telecommute, and have been "sheltering" since some time in Feb. We have a comfortable place, and I rarely need to go out - there isn't much open anyways. I can do yardwork on the weekend, or ride my bike if the weather is good. But I am fortunate - not far away there is a chicken processing plant and the number of cases there are quite high. They don't have the option of working from home.

For me the main place it gets me is that I can't go and visit my 98 year old mother in a nursing home - they are closed to all visitors and have been for a while now. I can do Zoom once in a while - that's the best I can do.

 

As BlueKona stated in an earlier post, this is what matters, and here is a link. Old news actually, data has been available for a couple of weeks.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/doctors-shut-downs-counter-decades-of-medical-science-overestimation-of-fatality-rates-caused-unwarranted-panic/article_2aaf567c-8e51-11ea-868b-5f5b518155a4.html
Death rates are MUCH, MUCH lower than previously reported.

Furthermore many covid-19 deaths in nursing homes are never actually diagnosed and confirmed by a test. In Belgium, for example, they claim that "About 95% of Covid-19 deaths in elderly care homes haven’t been diagnosed, yet Belgium makes the decision to register them based on the symptoms shown and who the people have been in contact with."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-25/why-the-world-s-highest-virus-death-rate-is-in-europe-s-capital

 

No one is actually performing autopsies on COVID-19 deaths. There is one German state that actually did autopsies on ALL confirmed COVID-19 deaths. It's the state of Hamburg and they had about 90 deaths or so.

100% of the autopsies showed major pre-existing conditions like transplants or heart attacks, etc.

 

To say these people had pre-existing conditions, doesn't mean that this is what they died from. All you can really say is that people with those conditions might be more likely to die if they get coronavirus. In the U.S., about 75000 people are now dead, and if there had been no coronavirus, nearly all of them would still be alive.

Having rows of refrigerated trailers parked outside of NYC hospitals as temporary morgues isn't normal. It isn't something we have seen in past years. I don't recall ever having seen this, in fact.

One of the "pre-existing conditions" is just being older. If you are older than 60, for example. People I know in that demographic are taking this very seriously. Once you get to 70 or 80, the concern only grows.

A few anecdotes about deaths from drug overdoses or people being possibly incorrectly recorded as covid don't interest me. Anecdotes aren't a useful way to discuss this, and that just leads us down the path of comparing stories.

Another way to look at it is by considering "excess death". What this means is looking at the total number of people that died of all causes this year, and comparing it to what they would have expected (by comparing to previous years, for example):

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html

In the article, they compare the official count of covid deaths to the number of excess deaths, and you can see that there is a significant undercount of covid deaths.

 

Seems like an unfeeling way to look at it, but I think you are right. What we don't know also now, is how many people will die, or die later prematurely because they had their elective surgery delayed. And then there are the broken families and suicides because of the economic recession.

 

I'm not ready for ouija board metrics.

Bob Wilson

 

bwilson4web as you are a retired engineer I want you to know that you have my respect for your grey matter capacity. I may not agree with your politics but listen to what you say with interest. "Statistics" I once read somewhere "can be used like bikinis". Which is to say they reveal a lot of suggestive materials while concealing the essentials. So the stats show this only slightly worse than the seasonal flue? I'm confused. In my life time I can't remember:

- Any country having to bring in military trucks to move bodies as the local morgues overflowed.
- Any U.S. state having to excavate an area for a mass grave
- So many residents of retirement homes dying at once.
- Care workers at senior's homes catching the bug and dying.
- Outbreaks in meat packing plants and workers dying.
- etc. etc. etc.

Sometimes I feel the human consciousness is like a narrow flashlight. What you see depends on where you shine the light.

 

"Are EV owners more scared of COVID-19 than ICE owners?"

• COVID-19 - late Dad was a pathologist, family practice, KU medical school instructor, Army doctor, State of Kansas Chief Medical officer, and County Coroner. Mom has degrees in accounting and nursing. Brother George is a nurse; brother Will is a radiology tech and; brother Dave does actuary for Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It wasn't until college that I learned we are not supposed to dissect my steak, turkey, chicken, or fish at dinner. So I've had exposure to medical terms and methods and that includes reading with comprehension, published medical articles. My understanding based on current Federal public health practices:
  • R-factor ~2 - each COVID-19 individual infects ~2 more which means the uninfected have to fall below 1/3 of 332 million USA citizens before the probability decreases below 1 and COVID-19 will 'run its course.' That means 222 million will have been through COVID-19
  • 80% - recover without hospitalization, 178 million recover at home
  • 14% - treated in hospitals are discharged, 31 million hospital discharged
  • 6% - die, 13 million die
  • Public health practices of China, S. Korea, New Zealand, and Australia - have successfully contained the virus and spread. These are not the practices in the USA that resemble "thoughts and prayers."
• ICE owners - both our 2014 BMW i3-REx and 2019 Std Rng Plus Model 3 scoot across intersections faster than the other cars and reach my choice of lane about 200 m ahead of the other cars. With much sound a fury, they eventually reach me but I'm already on cruise control and they have attracted the attention of traffic officers. The Tesla has video cameras to document 360 degrees around the car and 5-star accident rating. I drive +90% using Autopilot and Full Self Driver. The BMW sometimes has a font-facing, cabin dash cam with a carbon-fibre body on an aluminum frame:
  • 38,800 traffic deaths in 2019 - 13,000,000 / 38,800 ~= 335x greater risk of COVID-19 death

My family history was not by my design or action but an accident of birth and only offered to suggest I may have a clue.

The bottom line, the risk of death from COVID-19 is about 335x greater than a fatal traffic accident. My EVs provide additional safety capabilities that further reduce the traffic accident risk (and increase my fun.) As for CORVID-19, I can practice good public hygiene but is a crap-shoot. Fortunately, Huntsville AL has a lot of engineers and professionals who also practice good public hygiene. But we're all waiting on: (1) better tracking; (2) vaccination(s); (3) treatment(s), and; (4) eventual death.

Bob Wilson

ps. Perhaps this thread has wandered off into non-EV news/technology and should go to a better forum?

 

While another forum might be appropriate for this thread as the EV owners I'm sure you've encountered the skepticism and out right hostility the many have for EVs and green energy in general. "Just a hoax created by libtards and soy boys to suck on the government teat". They sincerely believe this and will grab any straw of stats to support their view:

- EVs are not practical ??
- EVs are not green because so many greenhouse gases are generated making the batteries
- EVs are not clean. You just moved the tailpipe somewhere else (electricity generated by coal)
- The batteries will die after 4 years.
- The batteries are not recyclable
- Wind turbines create more green house gases in their manufacture and eventual dismantling than they will ever save in their lifetime.
- etc. etc. etc.

As each objection gets disproved they just find new ones because they don't want to change their beliefs. This may look ridiculous to us but we all tend to act that way whether scientist, engineer or political hacks. Finding evidence to support what we already believe. You're a good man with numbers Bob and I respect that but this is a "novel" situation. We don't know what all the tricks the virus has up it's sleeve and how it's going to mutate. With different countries taking different approaches we'll be finding out in the next few months. Fingers crossed.

 

If it were really the case that it is only 2-3 times more deadly than a normal flu, we wouldn't see mass graves, temporary morgues, and other such things as enumerated above. These two things are inconsistent with each other, and therefore something must be incorrect. The mass graves and temporary morgues were widely reported on the news - unless you go off deep into conspiracy-land, the only way to resolve the inconsistency is to conclude that the statement that covid is only 2-3 times more deadly must be incorrect.