Hot, Hot, Hot - I

Hot, Hot, Hot - I hate heat. I'm a winter person.

It could certainly be worse, though. France may have suffered 10,000 deaths from heat in the past month.

According to Virginia Postrel (via Instapundit), France's addiction to socialism may have been part of the problem:

but isn't it interesting that the fabled solidarity of French socialism leaves old people alone to die from the heat as the whole country goes on vacation at the same time? Yet that seems to be a consensus view of what happened.

She quotes Jacques Chirac from a USA Today piece which ends:

"Critics turned on the French themselves for going on vacation while leaving aged relatives alone.

"These dramas again shed light on the solitude of many of our aged or handicapped citizens," Chirac said.

Far-fetched? The weather was little cooler in Germany - but Germans, marginally less-socialized than the French, were also in town...

Professor Gerd Jendritzky, a doctor who works for the German Weather Service, said that the situation in this country could not be compared to the disaster in France, where as many as 10,000 deaths have been attributed to the intense heat that plagued Europe in the first half of August. In Germany, he told F.A.Z. Weekly, “I expect a few hundred people died who would have lived without this heat.“ Jendritzky said a major difference was that Germany does not “close down“ as France does in August, meaning there were more people around to look after elderly, the most common overheating victims, and hospitals were well staffed.

C'mon, snow!

Posted by Mitch at August 26, 2003 11:54 AM