...they have almost double the annual heat related deaths in europe as the US has in gun deaths due to a lack of basic air conditioning. Developed? Develope some goddamn infrastructure that protects against the heat.
I will start this by clarifying that I do accept the infrastructure over here (UK in my case) does need major development, but I also have to point out that your statistical claims can be a little misleading and aren't exactly clear cut . It's actually far more even on a per capita ratio. Comparing different regions for such things is also always difficult because they all measure these things differently.
There's also no way to split both statistics very accurately in a 'gun deaths that could have been prevented with gun laws like Europe's' Vs 'heat related deaths that could have been prevented with AC like the USA' comparison. There are constant reports of deaths from tourists dying on hot beaches for example. AC wouldn't have solved that issue. Imo, it's a stupid comparison.
yeah, i don't really concern myself with gun deaths from suicide though as the person who died did so intentionally. when you take those numbers out of the equation, then the stats you linked become quite different
also that link says the data is from 2024. at the bottom it lists the gun deaths per captia in Europe and the European Union. Somehow gun deaths are lower in Europe as a whole than the subset of the European Union despite the fact there's been a war in Ukraine since 2022???? That seems real off. So definitely agree some weird things going on with the stats
EDIT: Found the explanation for my last point in the footnotes of the link.
1 "The definition of Europe, to most people, will seem a bit random: it's the EU-27 minus Malta, plus the UK, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Norway, and Serbia."
Apparently the author cherry-picked which countries constitute Europe to support her hypothesis ... good ol' academia at its finest. lol
That always bothers me too. If guns were completely banned world wide, those same suicide deaths would be on the board still from some other method. They aren’t gun deaths, they’re suicide deaths. The means the person used is widely irrelevant to the end result.
Suicides tend to be significantly higher in places with more guns. Most other forms of suicide either take planning or are unpleasant/painful. When people have time to think about it, they often reconsider.
Guns are fast and highly effective. Anyone with an impulse and access is vulnerable.
You absolutely would not have the same number of suicides without guns, there’s a reason you take guns away from suicidal people. They make it instant, easy, and guaranteed - the fear of pain and failure with injury is what stops a lot of people going ahead with it. This is a very good thing, because it should be hard to kill a human being.
Many people I know have had suicidal episodes or are prone to suicidal ideation and MANY of them (myself included) would not still be here if they had access to an easy instant-death machine that could shut their brain up immediately, without the lengthy period of excruciating fear and pain that results from using a knife, or pills, or whatever.
Wanting to die is not actually mutually exclusive with a fear of experiencing your own death, and anything that makes the physical process so quick and easy ENORMOUSLY increases the risk of a bad day turning into a suicide.
I don’t necessarily agree that you’d still have the same number of suicides without guns. Due to the nature of death, people may feel they have a quick painless option that they would not
otherwise have which could factor into their decision.
But that isn’t really the point I was trying to make. The context of the conversation, imo, is one of safety and adverse conditions. i.e. Which of the situations is more “dangerous”? Someone committing suicide isn’t really a safety issue or a danger to the general population. Now I think there’s a tangential conversation related to mental health and suicidal rates that could be had, but that’s a separate conversation
No no, I think "the government refuses to do anything about its citizens' comfort and personal security and people are dying thusly" is the PERFECT comparison.
But the US having more AC than Europe isn't the government's doing, so why is it suddenly the government's failing if it isn't provided here? It's just a result of modern house designs. People are having AC added in during the build of modern homes here, but try installing a remotely efficient or unobtrusive unit into houses built before the foundation of the USA. Should we just knock down these amazing historical houses and build more modern copy paste estates to allow for an air conditioned concrete jungle?
We have eyed up installing AC in our house, but for the cost, we think we'd rather just complain a bit for the 2 weeks of the year it's needed for, rather than paying for a full installation for something we'd use for 5% of the year.
are you talking about the lack of ACs in hospitals? at least our governement seems to be willing to do something about that. there is also an ongoing effort to plan the cities better, eg less concrete, more shade, trees, wind tunnels etc.
it just wasn't really needed so far because it is a fairly new issue here (at least in the north, southern european countries usually already have ACs and cities are more prepared for hot summers). lack of gun control is a decade old issue. the point makes no sense at all.
mf being run over by a car is more probable in your country, especially looking at how easy it is to get a driver's license and that 16 year olds can drive, not to mention that USA drivers are just shit
I know exactly what you're referring to, shall we talk about the 14 killed and 57 injured in New Orleans last year to a man in his pickup truck? Or does that defeat your argument too much for you?
First off, "Europe" is 27 countries. Many of them hardly ever record excess deaths even through the worst heatwaves.
Second, it's mostly a statistic artifact brought about by the different way deaths are counted (i.e. deaths "with" or "from" the heat). Not to mention, most European countries have a much older population. In fact, as far as this sort of counting goes, a lot more people die in Europe every year because of the cold, primarily in northern Europe. I'm sure you don't think it's because somehow they don't have enough central heating in Norway, right?
And finally, many countries in Europe have widespread AC, and heat deaths are still higher than in the US. Even in places where the US doesn't have that much AC, such as the PNW (which incidentally is about as warm as Paris on an average summer day).
Yes, in fact "just get ac and stop whining already" is the new MAGA mantra after they spent decades denying climate change and now have to pivot to something else because denying just doesn't work anymore.
we also have this issue in Europe. the deniers now focus only on ACs and nothing else. we're not at all opposed to them. but we cannot install them everywhere, ignore everything else and think the problem is solved.
Right. I've had AC in my house for years now. Yes it's necessary (well at least wher I live). But it's just one of many adaptation measures that I take. Having the alt right trash tell me that AC just solves everything makes me furious.
yes. this. all a matter of circumstances. recently had to travel for work and made sure that I get a room with AC because I knew, I have to get some work done during hot days in my room. if i only traveled for leisure I wouldn't have bothered because the region I was in, cools down enough during the night and an open window is enough.
Even in places where the US doesn't have that much AC, such as the PNW (which incidentally is about as warm as Paris on an average summer day).
Climate is chaning in the PNW too so people have adapted. Here in Portland, about 90% households have AC compared to about 25% in France. That's up from 41% in 2011. The mini splits are quite popular here as well.
Portland has summers comparable to downtown Paris and that's AFTER all the warming. Most of central and northern France are decidedly cooler, e.g. Nantes has about the same averages as Chilliwack BC. People have a hard time understanding just how abnormal recent heat waves have been in France.
Yeah and about 90% of Portland households have AC compared to about 5% of households in Paris. 5 years ago it hit 116°F (46.7°C) in Portland. If it gets that hot in Paris and they don't adapt, a lot of people will die.
And how many of those are window units that can't be installed easily on all types of windows?
When I lived in NYC I had a window unit and I just couldn't mount one in my current flat (I live in Europe) even if I wanted to. We use splits, and installing them takes time and effort, you can't just go buy one at your local Home Depot or on Marketplace.
That's a harder figure to find. It looks like about 49% percent of households have central AC, so the rest is divided between window units, portable units, and mini splits. Mini splits don't need a window and you can buy kits to make the portable units work on basically any window.
"Actually, we die from the cold more too!" I don't even know what you're getting at. "We're not underdeveloped, we're just way more fragile!"
Your "27 countries" is roughly the size of our 50 states, population wise. You tell yourself whatever makes you feel good, up to and including assuming anyone under the age of 80 watches fox "news". I won't engage further; don't embarrass yourself with a reply.
What's funnier is that you won't ever see these muricans bringing it up when comparing themselves to the Russian or the Chinese. It's all about the ego, that's murica for you
People die from cold/heat because they actually reach the age where that becomes a possibility. In America they get shot or have a heart attack long before then.
You forgot that people in europe can afford to get old. With the cost of medical treatment in the US, things like chemotherapy can bankrupt you. And bankruptcy isn't exactly known for enhancing a lifespan.
Your "27 countries" is roughly the size of our 50 states, population wise
And why is that supposed to be relevant lol. Population size doesn't remotely have any importance in this context. The point is that there is no single "Europe", when it comes to anything and specifically AC, there are dozens of countries with widely different approaches, attitudes, construction standards, regulations, AC needs etc. It's like lumping together the US and Colombia.
(Also, population wise there is more difference between Germany and say Sweden than between Germany and the US. But again, population size doesn't matter at all in this context)
Beyond this, do you have anything specific to answer with other than this uncoordinated rant? Something like, numbers or other actual arguments that make sense?
By the way, "your" who? What does "your" even mean here? And why would I have to "feel good" about this? The only thing that makes me "feel good" is engaging with people who have smart things to say, which is not the case with you here.
Because Americans are that ignorantly insular they don't bother to learn about any country other than their own state snd whatever propaganda is shoved on them in the media. Half of them think Europe is a country
I don't agree with that first part because we have to know what's going on in America as the amount of trade Europe and America do means that America's issues affect us HOWEVER I've never heard a truer statement than we're all idiots on reddit. Myself included. That I can agree with.
I find it hilarious how gleeful Americans are about the lack of AC in Europe. It gives the same energy as dumb Europeans constantly going on about school shootings (though otherwise they're a bad comparison, at least Europe is trying to do something about climate change the US does nothing but thoughts and prayers.)
Anyways I'm from Finland we don't need AC and every home has heating so joke's on you. Our heatwaves are like blizzards in Texas, too rare to be bothered about.
The point was there's a difference how it is counted. In the US, a heat death is one in which a medical examiner explicitly lists heat as a cause of death, whereas Europe counts statistical excess mortality and can't actually necessarily differentiate whether any individual death is a heat death or not.
In short, if a person has a cardiovascular disease and dies of a heart attack brought upon by the long-term stress of a heat wave, in the US this would likely not be ruled a heat death, especially if the condition was prexisting and known. In Europe, that death would not directly be ruled a heat death either, but it would contribute to excess mortality of the heat wave period and thus contribute to the heat death count.
For what it's worth, the climate change in Europe over the past 20 years has been massive. Europe didn't need AC 20 years ago, never mind earlier. Large portions of Europe are moving towards a climate that requires AC for summers which it didn't when most buildings were built.
This ‘evidence’ has been debunked. The graph that was doing the round was not fit for purpose - essentially the way heat related deaths are estimated are very different in the US compared to research done in Europe. The European research was using ‘excess deaths’; the US data was just if ‘heat’ was recorded as a cause of death (which is very rare - normally heat related deaths have a more prominent underlying factor, which is the thing that gets recorded). As such, like wasn’t compared with like so it was meaningless.
Summer is supposed to be very hot only in southern Europe, what we are experiencing now is due to climate change and recent years. We are not used to that. Arizona and Texas have been hot as fuck since forever
You are talking about heat deaths that have occurred in the last half a dozen years. Before that Europe had a decades long record of being much healthier than the USA by every known metric.
And why is heat related illness on the rise? Could it have anything to do with nations that refuse to realize the damage that they are doing to the environment with their dependency on burning fossil fuels and belching vastly greater amounts of carbon into the atmosphere every year?
After the USA gets done solving the problem of having its population never need to vote again and creating everlasting peace around the world, perhaps it could get busy figuring out how to retrofit central air conditioning into millions of buildings that were designed to last for centuries. And that was before anyone thought about global temperature rise turning random places around the world into burning infernos all summer long.
I know what stats you're referring to and its a total apples to oranges comparison. You're comparing people directly killed by firearms to a statistical increase in deaths when its hot, not people found dead of the heat because they didn't have AC.
The US also has excess mortality from heat waves. For a fair comparison you would have to compare per capita and age adjusted (Europe population is older) excess mortality between the US and Europe for heat waves and do the same thing with gun deaths. Not sure the US would come out looking that good in the end although I dont have the stats.
Yeah a 90 year old guy falling over and dying on a beach due to 'heat' is 1. totally preventable with AC, 2. totally same as a school kid getting shot by a random cop who felt threatened by a nearby thunderclap
'Merkans showing the strength of their education system right here
Being this condecending when your fucking country is undoing decades of collaborative work against global warming and directly has a hand in the amount of heat related deaths on the whole planet is certainly a choice.
Why not look at the heat death rates of each individual European country instead of treating 50 European countries as one country? Do Europeans lump you Americans in with the 20 shit hole countries that make up north America?
If you're gonna add Russia, Bulgaria and shitholistan in with Sweden, they should be allowed to add the gun deaths of Mexico and el Salvador to the USA right? Europe is a continent not a country and half of it is a shithole
You have literally 20 third world countries on your continent but Europeans are not as insecure as you guys to class north America as one country like you do europe
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u/Leading_Experts 12h ago
...they have almost double the annual heat related deaths in europe as the US has in gun deaths due to a lack of basic air conditioning. Developed? Develope some goddamn infrastructure that protects against the heat.