More precisely: for the US, they only checked if the “cause of death” field on the certificate mentions heat but EU statistics compare to a model of how many deaths would have occurred without a heatwave. Of course heat makes lots of indirect deadly circumastances more likely. We don’t have recent studies on heat deaths with similar methodology to compare both regions but at least the gun death statistics are more clear-cut.
Also, this is a bit cynical but people who die to heat usually had preexisting conditions and were statistically likely to die in 10 years anyway. Meanwhile most gun deaths are young adults whose productive careers were cut short.
I already said I’m being a bit cynical. I can move it up a notch and even thank heat waves for culling old, sickly people who would otherwise keep using taxpayer-funded healthcare for a few more years.
More precisely: for the US, they only checked if the “cause of death” field on the certificate mentions heat but EU statistics compare to a model of how many deaths would have occurred without a heatwave. Of course heat makes lots of indirect deadly circumastances more likely. We don’t have recent studies on heat deaths with similar methodology to compare both regions but at least the gun death statistics are more clear-cut.
Also, this is a bit cynical but people who die to heat usually had preexisting conditions and were statistically likely to die in 10 years anyway. Meanwhile most gun deaths are young adults whose productive careers were cut short.
I think with “productive careers” you meant “lives”, but I guess I’m not American enough to value life over producing. (jk)
I already said I’m being a bit cynical. I can move it up a notch and even thank heat waves for culling old, sickly people who would otherwise keep using taxpayer-funded healthcare for a few more years.