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by ars 28 days ago
Thousands of people died in the EU over this heat, and you think it's American that isn't doing well?

"more than 1300 excess deaths have been recorded since 21 June linked to the extreme heat in Europe"

"There were approximately 489,000 heat-related deaths annually between 2000 and 2019, according to modeled estimates."

https://wmo.int/media/news/record-breaking-heat-spreads-thro...
1 comments
tavavex 28 days ago
What? Did the EU cause the heat wave? This thread is clearly about politics, and the parent claims that Americans complain about the EU and its politics because their own have gone completely off the rails. Disparaging the EU over a crazy heat wave is like criticizing a country because it has had a major natural disaster recently.
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ars 28 days ago
The EU caused the deaths, not the heat. People have been dying from heat in the EU for decades now, and the EU has done ........ nothing (well other than declare superiority to the US).

More people die from heat each year in the EU than from guns in the US. Which topic gets more attention?

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tavavex 28 days ago
I still don't see how you get from 'many countries mismanaged their response to heat in the wake of the climate becoming more extreme' to 'the building of the European Commission is the bastion of evil' that the parent was pointing out. This ignores the context and just tries to find any reason to claim that the EU as a whole is bad.

Comparing heat deaths to gun deaths is beyond absurd, but people keep repeating it because it's a good soundbite that makes the US seem good and the EU seem bad. It's like ranking places by comparing flu deaths to war deaths. Gun-related deaths are direct and attributable. The heat deaths reported are counted as 'excess deaths'. The number of people who actually die from the heat is small if compared to the overall number. Excess deaths counts all cases where people's existing issues were exacerbated by the high temperatures which eventually pushes them over the edge - old age, heart disease and the like. Heat mostly doesn't make healthy people drop dead in the streets, unlike a direct cause like guns. It diminishes everyone's health which makes already vulnerable people die earlier of their pre-existing conditions than they otherwise could have. These are different metrics.

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