Another Illustration of Why Social Distancing Is So Important

So you may have seen videos from a few weeks ago of college aged “Spring Breakers” in Florida completely ignoring the guidance to ‘social distance’

“If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying”

NOTE: To the kid’s credit, he did apologize for the tone deaf comment, however the damage was done.

To further illustrate how important it is to practice ‘social distancing’ during this time to prevent the acceleration of COVID-19, a data tracking service called Tectonix GEO (a little self-serving but that’s another story) demonstrated how one specific cluster of ‘spring breakers’ on a beach in Fort Lauderdale – where if even one of them had the virus – could/would/did exponentially spread it throughout the country.

Each little dot on this screen grab above represents a mobile device. So first thing they did was highlight a fairly small but specific set of devices located on the beach in Fort Lauderdale a couple of weeks ago. From there, using what they called a ‘spider query’, they then tracked the movement of those specific devices over the next few weeks to demonstrate how this one isolated beach gathering could rapidly and exponentially spread the virus.

That is pretty much the clearest demonstration of how important ‘social distancing’ is in combating the spread of this virus. I mean, seriously look at that map. That small cluster of phones on the beach in Florida essentially distributed out to every state east of the Mississippi and few west of there.

Now, to really make you shudder, think of this same scenario playing out repeatedly in NY or Chicago or San Francisco. In fact, we saw it play out in real time with the first really publicized case out of New Rochelle, NY. That one lawyer who had the virus, went into and out of NYC without knowing he had it, and through community spread, easily exposed upwards of 1,000 people to the virus before anyone knew.

You can watch the full demo below (only a minute long):

Tesla Gives FLA Owners A Bump Up

With the current Hurricane Irma situation in Florida, the fine folks at Tesla thought it would be a good idea to ‘flip a switch’ on the software of those who own Teslas down there, so they have a little more range on a battery charge to get outta dodge:

Up until a few months ago, Tesla sold a 60kWh version of its Model S and Model X vehicles but the battery in those cars was actually rated at 75kWh. The thinking: Tesla could offer a more affordable 60kWh version to those who didn’t need the full range of the 75kWh battery, but to keep things simple, they’d just use the same 75kWh battery and lock it on the software side. If 60kWh buyers found they needed more range and wanted to upgrade later, they could, or if Tesla wanted to suddenly bestow owners with some extra range in case of an emergency, they could.

Source: Tesla flips a switch to increase the range of some cars in Florida to help people evacuate | TechCrunch