Sure, for modern systems "transfer rates of 30 seconds per byte" would also be "a huge signal flare going off instantly" where metrics track basic software-hardware interaction (latency and throughput, not just on/off error rates).

These metrics also need not necessarily by definition take longer to notice gray failures. You can detect a gray failure transfer rate without having to wait 30 seconds. Another example, but a second or two is enough to notice disk latency issues (and retry to a faster disk), which is probably in the same granularity as the window for detecting "Connection refused".