Oh Elon…

If you’ve followed me here for a while… yadda yadda…

Welp, you know I drive a Tesla Model 3. I’ve been driving since 1982/3 or thereabouts, my first car being a 1981 Ford Mustang. In the (too) many years since I first started driving, I’ve driven all kinds of vehicles, good, mediocre, and terrible.

But nothing –nothing– to my mind is like my Model 3. I’m absolutely floored by the car and the tech behind it. I love the car. Moreso: I’m positive I will never again buy another internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle ever again.

I love just about everything about the car and wish the other car companies would follow Tesla’s lead and jump on board the EV revolution… these cars are truly the next level.

But…

Man, does Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, make me sometimes scratch my head. He’s clearly a very sharp/smart individual. Getting a company like Tesla, much less Space X, off the proverbial ground and making them create such astounding things (cars and spacecraft) is nothing at all to sneeze at. It takes large investments and considerable brain-power (not just Musk’s, but employing smart people to make these things a reality).

The fact that he has potentially upended one industry -the automotive industry- and may well lead them kicking and screaming into the EV market is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Yet we get moments like this one, presented on gizmodo.com and written by Matt Novak, wherein we find that…

Elon Musk Tweets “Free America Now” as his Coronavirus predictions prove very wrong

Elon -I can call you Elon, can’t I?- Why dude?

Why would you go around saying things like this? I’m tired of being locked in. I wish we could go back to the way things were. Yes, I know Coronavirus isn’t, say, Ebola and that the percentage of people who contract it and subsequently die is a low percentage, around 3-4% and often those who succumb are elderly or infim…

…however…

In just a few months, we’ve had worldwide deaths linked to Covid-19 at 225,000. In the U.S., that number is as of April 29th an astonishing 61,421.

That’s a lot of fatalities in what amounts to, what, 2-3 months at most?

There are some indications that the self-isolation has helped the numbers come down, but there are many, including Musk, who clearly are itching to have industries/stores/etc. open back up to full.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe they feel the fatalities aren’t that big. But consider this: In one year between 3000 to 49,000 people may die from the flu. Pretty startling numbers but, again, this is for a year.

Covid-19 is simply a far more deadly virus and the idea of opening everything up, frankly, scares me.

We’re risking a lot more lives and the possibility of once again seeing a jump in infections and hospitalizations.

Do we really need that? Isn’t it safer to hang back, economically painful as it may be, to try to tramp this down as much as possible and/or hopefully buy time to develop effective treatments?

I know, I’m just another voice out there and a small one at that.

Someone noted that the self-isolation was like jumping out of a plane and pulling open a parachute.

We’ve slowed down the descent yet there are people who feel now they can release the parachute even though we’re not even halfway to the ground.

Might they be right?