Zybd1201
Member
Are you talking about coccidiodomycosis (aka valley fever). A few people die from it, but it's so widespread that when someone produced a vaccine for it, they couldn't find enough people living in the San Joaquin Valley who hadn't had it to do a clinical trial. The vast majority of people who are exposed develop an immunity with few if any symptoms.
The HEPA filter in most western countries is primarily to filter out bad smells. We drive past a sewage treatment plant and a paper mill heading into town and both are pretty unpleasant. When there is a lot of pollen in the air it is nice to be able to filter it out, some pollens really bother me. In China the bio-defense mode is worth its weight in gold!
I do agree with your overall point though. I'll be getting my refresh Model S in a few weeks and I'm sure they will come out with something I'd want later this year. It is what it is and I just have to accept it. About the only thing I'd really be bummed about is missing the 100 KWh battery by a few days or weeks.
I bit off topic but yeah, I practiced in the San Joaquin Valley for a while and my spouse contracted and became very ill from cocci. I also saw a number of people die from it. It is especially severe in African American populations for some reason and the many people who have immunodeficiency syndromes or are on immunosuppressive therapies.
My point, primarily, is that there are a lot of things people don't anticipate which actually have a huge impact on an individual's life. Sometimes a car isn't just a car. If it bankrupts the middle east power players, makes Beijing a tolerable place to be again, and saves one or two lives in Bakersfield, CA that is a very very big deal and that is not even getting started on autopilot features, safety features, etc.
With all we have done in modern medicine, if we eliminated auto fatalities and pollution in certain places where it has a very significant impact on public health it would be the greatest accomplishment of my lifetime.
Sorry for going off topic but yeah, keep pushing the envelope and forcing other manufacturers to catch up will eventually make a dent in some of our biggest problems.