This was posted in another group today. Having deleted the air con thread I can;t post it there. Anyway, in case anyone is still interested in this subject.....
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The number of mortalities in France in 2004, 509,000 was the lowest in recent years.
1995 532,000 1996 536,000 1997 530,000 1998 534,000 1999 538,000 2000 531,000 2001 531,000 2002 534,000 2003 550,000 2004 509,000The heat wave of August 2003 was known to produce an excess number of deaths in the ages over 75-80 of about 15,000 for that month alone. We see however that the number of deaths fro 2004, 509,000 was 20,000 or more below an expected number of between 530,000-535,000. So the hypothesis that the heat wave produced deaths of people who would have died in the near future.
The French report on this data by Gilles Pison says that the lowering of the number of death in 2004 more than compensated the excess lost in 2003. He also says that was much less of a flu epidemic, although did not mention that the French health system had pushed flu shots for the aged (they are free for those over 65) and that other public health policies had perhaps aided in lowering the number of deaths. He does discuss that the large number of deaths during the heat wave had sensitize older people to the dangers of heat and better preventative methods had been taken in 2004. But 2004 was not a warm summer.
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