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Third world

23 comments on Third world

Third world
: Can somebody explain how, in a civilized country, a mere heat wave can kill, by current estimates, 10,000 people? Good God.

Some critics blamed families for abandoning elderly relatives alone at home while they took August vacations. Health workers blamed understaffing and underfunding at hospitals and retirement homes. Many accused the government of doing too little, too late.

In an apparent effort to calm the storm of criticism, Chirac said ”today, the time is for contemplation, solidarity and action.” …

Chirac was vacationing in Canada during the heat wave and did not speak about the crisis in public, although aides said he was following the situation. Still, his decision not to break off his vacation irked some of Chirac’s opponents.

That’s our Jacques.

23 responses to “Third world”

  1. Anil Avatar
    Anil

    I didn’t understand how it could happen either, until I read this MetaFilter thread where you can see it’s a combination of unusual weather (if we got up to 125 degrees here, people would start dying), some cultural problems, and an almost complete lack of air conditioning.
    http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/27692

  2. Rube Avatar
    Rube

    I dunno, man. I live over here (to me, Europe==’over here’, I’m in Germany). It’s not like it’s that hot.
    But, then again, I’m from Georgia.
    Hmmm…maybe it’s all that there Socialized Medicine. Or maybe they’re just pulling numbers out of their behinds to distract from the disastrous economy, disastrous corporate scandals, and disastrous international diplomacy that’re plaguing the french at the moment…

  3. Jennifer Martinez Avatar
    Jennifer Martinez

    I don’t see HOW they can not have air conditioners in France. That’s absurd. I grew up in Houston, TX, there was one summer we had no a/c, we all survived the 100+ degree temps. The Frogs must be wimps.
    Jennifer Martinez sends

  4. Anil Avatar
    Anil

    I like how we had 3000 people die, the French responded the next day by saying “we are all Americans”, and then they have 10,000 people die and the response is “The Frogs must be wimps.” You’re right, the French have a monopoly on being arrogant assholes.

  5. d00d Avatar
    d00d

    Anil, nice point, but the two situations aren’t comparable. 10,000 french people died of natural causes over the period of about a month. The only shocking thing is how it could happen in a modern country.
    9/11==shocking.
    a heat wave==not shocking

  6. Rube Avatar
    Rube

    Anil, nice try, but no cigar. A lot of people are shocked by how many people have died in France. Jennifer might be a little insensitive there, but the amazing thing is that no other country in Europe is even close to this kind of death toll. Even in Spain, where it’s been hotter, or Belgium, which is just as hot, there’s no 10,000+ body count.
    I don’t think it means the french are wimps. I think it means they’re making stuff up, personally.

  7. Giles Avatar
    Giles

    Maybe they’re just trying to solve their pensions crisis?

  8. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    Temps in France are usually in the mid 70’s and drop down to the upper 50’s at night. Their temps are now 25-30 degrees above normal and have been for over a month with no relief. Typically you don’t find air conditioners in France because they don’t need them. It hasn’t been this hot in France in hundreds of years. I’m not above snarking on the French but deaths of the elderly and small children leave me, well, snarkless.

  9. Jackie D Avatar
    Jackie D

    As has been pointed out before, if someone locks a baby in a car on a hot day and the baby dies, you don’t say, “Oh, how tragic, that baby died from a heatwave.” You say, “What a totally idiotic thing to do; that baby died because of someone’s stupidity and negligence.”
    I am stunned that Anil would draw a comparison between these mostly avoidable deaths and terrorist attacks. Boy, please. (And only a cynic would suggest that the initial figure of 3000 dead was arrived at in the hopes of getting people to draw just such a comparison. As Michael J Totten pointed out, along with a piece in Le Monde, the French are even blaming America for the heatwave. It is insane. Almost as insane as comparing the dead in France to the dead in America on September 11.
    NB I am in Europe and can tell you that it is sheer stupidity that air conditioning is not more widespread. Every summer it gets hot, and every summer people act stunned that it’s happened. Everyone complains and and it’s the top story on the news every night about how so many people are skipping work because there’s no air conditioning. Instead of suggesting that, you know, it might be a good idea to take some steps to rectify this, people propose “maximum temperature laws,” so that everyone can get out of work on hot days and the economy can grind to a halt. It’s one of the most disgusting manifestations of a society where the state is relied on for everything, right down to regulating the freaking weather, and it’s nothing to be supported with sympathy. People die because of a stubborn unwillingness to improve quality of life without state intervention, and the more we call it out for the ridiculousness it is, the more chance there is that they will be shamed into doing something about it.

  10. Richard G Molpus Avatar
    Richard G Molpus

    Any chance that the French will now understand why Americans always want ice in their drinks, and beer served ice cold?
    Naaawwww…. Americans always do things wrong….

  11. American Guy Avatar
    American Guy

    Chirac should be forced to spend a week in a 125 degree F appartment, then maybe next time he won’t be so silent. (Or then again, maybe his silence is a blessing?)
    How sad to return from August vacation and discover your grandparents have roasted to death.
    With good leadership the death toll might have been kept to 1/10th the size.
    Chirac est les Imbicile.

  12. Jeremy Avatar
    Jeremy

    I have to say, I’m somewhat suspicious of the death figures. There are no actual body counts, just “estimates” from undertakers .
    And how many are heat related, and how many are just regular, normal deaths?
    France has a death rate of 9.05 per 1000 people. They have something like 60 million people. So thats about 540,000 dead people a year. So about 10,000 a week.
    Now, if the 10,000 in two weeks is additional deaths, that’s about a 50% increase. But if that’s the total amount of deaths, it’s a 50% decrease, because in two weeks, you would normally expect 20,000 dead French.
    Furthermore, if it’s mostly elderly people, maybe their death date has just been moved up? I mean, maybe some of these people had only 3 or 4 months left to live, but this cut it short.
    There’s simply not enough data to indicate how severe an increase there actually is. I’m sure there is an increase – that always happens in a heat wave, but the European press tends to be pretty sensationalist, if not downright hysterical.
    Anyway, I do have to wonder if perhaps alcohol consumption plays something of a role. The French do drink a lot of wine…alcohol tends to be bad for you in hot weather.
    Of course the really scary thing is, if that many additional people did die, the French are basically the ones running the EU. All of Europe will be run like that in the not so distant future.

  13. Chris K Avatar
    Chris K

    Third world? Hardly:
    “In the United States, heat waves kill more people than hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and floods combined.”
    “Heat waves are slow, silent, and invisible killers of silent and invisible people.”
    Quotes from this article by Eric Klinenberg in the International Herald Tribune. More informed and rational comments to be found at Crooked Timber.
    I am kind of upset by the widespread “those stupid frogs” kind of reports, posts and comments emanating from the US. There is a stench of macabre Schadenfreude in the air.

  14. balbulican Avatar
    balbulican

    One of the best things about Europe’s ungrateful refusal of Mr. Bush’s generous invitation to waltz in Iraq is the opportunity it’s given us to resurrect all those delightful ethnic labels sobriquets that had lamentably fallen into disfavour. Otherwise civil, mature Americans now grumble about “frogs” and “krauts”, secure in the knowledge that it’s not only acceptable…it’s downright patriotic.
    Who knows? A few more Somalias and another Liberia or two, and we may get to restore “nigger” to respectability. Won’t that be fun?

  15. R C Dean Avatar
    R C Dean

    That many deaths from the weqther sure sounds like a pretty shocking indictment of French housing, medical care, and social support systems.
    You know, the very stuff that the lefties are always lecturing us about how we have a lot to learn from the French. You would think with all that socialized medicine and whatnot that everyone would have all the medical care they need to deal with minor stuff like heat exhaustion.
    BTW, millions of people lived for hundreds of years in far hotter conditions in the US South, and many many people there still have no air conditioning. I myself lived in Richmond Virginia for 4 years with no airco, through summers worse than anything the French have had. Its not that hard, folks.

  16. Chris K Avatar
    Chris K

    R C Dean said: “I myself lived in Richmond Virginia for 4 years with no airco, through summers worse than anything the French have had. Its not that hard, folks.”
    I doubt you’ll say that verbatim past your 70th birthday.
    And read my first post if you will. You’ll then realize this is also a problem in the US.

  17. Diana Avatar
    Diana

    Chris, welcome to the blogsophere, where every idiot has his say!

  18. Jennifer Martinez Avatar
    Jennifer Martinez

    Well I would suggest that France start buying and using air conditioners. The fact that they are having a heat wave is not our fault. What can they base that off of?
    Yes it’s terrible to hear that the very young and the elders are dying, like I said, buy an a/c unit. How hard can it be? Order online if local stores don’t carry them.
    I don’t see where the “N” word comes into play here. I may be wrong but “frog” isn’t bad like the “N” word. The troops in Somalia didn’t say the “N” word, they referred to the bad guys as “skinnies.”
    This isn’t the first time I’ve been “insensitive.” :) I’m not politically correct, so it won’t be the last time either. I’m sorry but I just don’t have any sympathy for a country who in this day and age has no a/c. It’s to be expected from a Third World Country, but France?? Who would have thought…
    Jennifer Martinez sends

  19. Eric Deamer Avatar
    Eric Deamer

    3,000 people die on 9-11 and it leads to conspiracy theories, recrimination, and politicization by the French. Despite whatever facile, empty gestures were made by Le Monde in the immediate aftermath (which Anil Dash refers to above) the facts are clear: 1) The conspiracy theory book saying that we did it was a bestseller in France, 2) And now the pornography version is coming out to great fanfare, and 3) The huge Muslim radical population of France undoubtedly believea that all Jews didn’t show up to work that day as do such types throughout the world.
    “10,000 people” maybe, possibly die in the French heat wave, and we go into what might seem on the face of it to be politicized conspiracy theorist mode, thinking the following: 1) The number just seems unbelievably high. 3,000 seemed unbelievably high but this is just ridiculous, and if you actually analyze how these numbers were arrived at (which are all estimates) the science seens inexact at best. 2) How come in Germany next door we’re not hearing about these numbers, even though they are equally unused to these conditions there? 3) If the vaunted socialized health care system and welfare state of France are this inadequate to handle an unusually hot summer does this not say something revealing about the French government? If people there are not voluntarily going to check on their elderly relatives and neighbors does this not reveal something about French society?
    However, we’re not alone in having a politicized, conspiratorial thinking type of reaction to the heat wave because, guess what, the French think its our fault! A recent Newsweek article by Howard Fineman talks about how everyone there (including the vaunted Le Monde) is blaming on Bush for not signing the Kyoto protocols. Yes, my friends, the weather is the Americans fault.

  20. Dann Avatar
    Dann

    The hot weather is our fault? They who do the Australians blame for their record cold winter?
    Global warming is a best a theory and at worst luddite propaganda. I’m leaning towards the latter.

  21. John Thacker Avatar
    John Thacker

    Now, I know that a record heatwave killed around 700 elderly in Chicago a few years back, where they also don’t have that much air conditioning. So it does happen here. Still, it is a shocking number. And it is odd that no similar reports seem to be coming from other nearby countries.

  22. John Thacker Avatar
    John Thacker

    The problem is, of course, magnified by being in apartments with little ventilation in large urban areas. I have many relatives who lived to an old age without A/C in NC. (Now everyone has it, of course.) Those houses were built extremely differently, though, since the high temperatures were expected.
    Chicago’s problems are a good comparison.

  23. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    The pb isn’t that there is no a/c in the homes, that’s to be expected in a country where the avg summer temps are mild. The pb is that there is no a/c in the hospitals and nursing homes and serious understaffing during August. This doesn’t happen in the US because nobody who is PAYING for services would stand a non a/c hospital room or nursing home room for a NY minute.
    Two cases that I know about:
    the 2nd week of the heat wave a friend got a call from her in-laws’ nursing home about the risk , my friend and her husband left for Bordeaux and spent the week making sure her in-laws (mother has alzheimers and father is blind)drank plenty of water, wiping them down with cool cloths, etc. There was no fan in the room and the windows didn’t permit cross-air ventilation. The inside temp in the room was about 38C. My friend told me that nursing home staff would go around to the patients and make sure that bottles of water were available, but no one stuck around to make sure that they drank the water because of the understaffing. Old folks who didn’t have family to come and take care of them were s*** out of luck.
    The second case was one I read in the paper: a woman here in Cote d’Azur region took her mom to the hospital for breathing pbs. At first her mom was put in an a/c post surgical area but soon she was moved to a non a/c room where the temp hit 40+C during the day. The woman died after a few days. “Normal” or heat related death? Whatever the case, 40+ temps in the patient’s room didn’t help.
    There is a pervasive belief here in France that a/c is bad for the health. I work in an a/c office and until this summer more days than not the a/c would be off and we would all sit there and sweat. My first summer here I gave all my friends evidence of crazy americans by buying and installing window a/c in my own apartment. But that has changed this year. The first heat wave was in May and since then no peeps from anyone about running the a/c. One colleague postponed her vacation until the fall so that she could come into work during the day with the a/c! And this year all window a/c units were sold out by the first week in July. I heard two ladies talking ahead of me in line at the grocery store & one of them was going to install central a/c and that the next install date is December for next summer.
    When I first arrived there was no a/c in the cars and I had to get it as an option in my mid-priced Peugeot. Now all cars above the sub-econ level have a/c included standard. So the culture is changing. I figure that another hot summer will seal the change and most everyone will have a/c (at least a window unit) within a few years.
    The remaining pb will be the spartan conditions and understaffing of nursing homes & hospitals + govt inaction to correct the deficiencies. The right will blame the left for the 35 hour week, the left will blame the right for not raising taxes, guvvies will call for one or two more resignations, some studies and inqueries will be requested, the results will be ignored because it is too expensive to implement and situation will slink off the public radar until the next heatwave. Lather, rinse, and repeat.