Air conditioning is reasonably inexpensive, readily available, and easily installed. Nevertheless, after Europe suffered 16,000 heat-related deaths and Belgium alone was hit with 1,747 excess deaths during a recent heat wave, these smug Luddites still refuse to embrace one of the great miracles of the previous century.
This is monstrous… And could have been easily prevented…
“Seniors died in stifling apartments. Emergency calls were left on hold. Doctors treated an onslaught of people sick from heat, sometimes in wards without air-conditioning,” reports the far-left New York Times. “These are scenes that played out in Belgium, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, on a recent summer weekend.”
In one region of Belgium called Wallonia, more people died in a single day from the heat than died the worst day of the COVID pandemic. From mid-June to early July, the death rate in Belgium was 77 percent higher than normal.
As you would expect, 85 percent of those deaths were people over age 65.
Naturally, the New York Times and the Euro-weenies blame this heat wave on Climate Change. Everyone is also certain things will get worse; that these deadly heat waves will become more severe and commonplace.
Still, they refuse to embrace the easy and cost-efficient remedy of air conditioning.
Facade of block of flats with the windows open to cool off and for ventilation, as most of the residential buildings in Brussels luck AC units.. (Photo by Gene Medi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“[P]atients were often hesitant to install air-conditioning, worried that it would make them sick, spread germs and harm the environment,” one doctor explained. He added that…
“Belgians do not want to be Americans,” with their thermostats set at “65 degrees.”
That doctor also said that Belgium’s “mentality on air-conditioning has to change,” but Belgian officials told the Times they oppose “relying too much on climate control, concerned that adding it could overwhelm the power grid and leave cities even hotter by pumping hot air into the streets.”
This is lunacy…
Belgium has also had at least seven years to do something about this, even if it is only cooling centers or educating the public on what to do in a heatwave — common sense things, like slipping into a cool bath or shower.
You see, this summer’s 104-degree peak is not the hottest on record. In July of 2019, Belgium hit 107.2 and 104.4 degrees in July. So, if you believe in Climate Change, why not get cracking in 2019 to protect yourself? Why hasn’t the government done anything? Good heavens, all the way back in 2003, temperatures in Belgium rose to over 100 degrees. It happened once in 1947.
As far as I’m concerned, Belgium has had plenty of time and plenty of warning to boost its electric grid. Nevertheless… “Half of all emergency rooms in Wallonia lacked air-conditioning[.]” So, you go to the emergency room overcome with the heat and enter an even hotter cauldron filled with people.
This is medieval.
This is barbarism.
This is superstitious, anti-science nonsense.
All the resources are available to prevent every one of these deaths, and these smug dumbasses “do not want to be Americans,” with their thermostats set at “65 degrees.”
Okay, how about 75 degrees? How about 85 degrees?
The left is so out of ideas that their only path to power is to so toxify the political right that people who live in one of the world’s richest countries would rather die a grisly, awful, painful death from heatstroke than install a $400 air conditioner.
The left has become a death cult.
Is it beyond possibility that Europe refuses to enter the modern age because the heat mostly kills the elderly and that’s what they want? After all, the modern left sees the elderly as an unnecessary drain on public health resources. The modern left sees all human beings not as individuals created by God and therefore uniquely precious, but as something utilitarian that is of no use once what they take from the State is more than what they give to the State.
It’s no secret. Remember this?
These Belgians are so stupid. Why not buy a room air conditioner for days over 90 or 100 degrees — you know, just to save your life?
About ten years ago, we needed a new furnace, and discovered that adding central air conditioning didn’t juice the price so much. So, at age 50, and for the first time in my life, I live in central air. Still, because my primary responsibility is to look out for the comfort and well-being of my wife, I have a portable air conditioner on hand in the event my central unit goes out during a hot spell.
Many years ago, when Chicago was hit with an unprecedented heat wave, my wife and I had an air conditioner installed in my mother-in-law’s apartment.
These are the basic actions of a civilized society. Ah, but in oh-so-progressive Europe and Belgium, tens of thousands of people needlessly die because the government is not looking out for the well-being of its citizens, and the citizens are so ignorant they refuse to take basic common-sense measures to protect themselves and their families.