What is your latency? Can you move data closer to where db is (cloud)? Did you change isolation level? Or recovery model? Did you try bcp? Any indexes you have in table should be deleted?

I am not expert, but seems plausable. Shock comes from high voltage electric charge jumping from metal to skin. If you press it, you are part of the electric charge. If you are far away, charge cannot jump. Problem is only when you are couple of centimeters close to it. AFAIK, this is not current, but electric discharge, I think it cannot kill you (it is just very unpleasant), but maybe someone else knows better?

Belgrade, Serbia got you covered: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/39596307 (we were once socialist country, but more and more streets are losing their original names nowadays:(