The primary cause of the death was not vacation.
Sorry dude, but this is pure speculation on your part.
In France, an extremely unwise practice takes place, where a very large portion of physicians all take vacation at the same time in August. This inherently weakens the healthcare infrastructure’s ability to respond to crisis.
When the event took place, the health minister of france didn’t even come back from HIS vacation to deal with it, and his aides specifically canceled emergency procedures which were already in place that would have recalled physicians.
While it’s true that a major elderly people were left alone and ended up dying at home (somewhat freakishly, as their families were on vacation), your attempt to handwave away the problems that existed with their heathcare staff is misguided. The head of their emergency healthcare workers union specifically criticized their government’s lack of action (indeed, their aggressive prevention of action).
You seem to be under some kind of mistaken impression that this is somehow a criticism of socialism, or europe, or something that is prompting you to jump to a knee-jerk defense of a policy that was largely indefensible.
I suppose there probably were a few people that died due to under-resourced staff at hospitals. But the majority of people that made it to the hospital, and actually got out of the 110-degree heat and were given a fluids IV and place to lie down, survived.
Oh, you think that a FEW of the people that died died in hospitals? Try again. 42% of the deaths associated with that heatwave occurred in hospitals.
The Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris reported more than 2600 excess emergency department visits, most of them classified as heat related, and 1900 excess hospital admissions (Fig. (Fig.1),1), which unfortunately coincided with a common decrease of available beds during the summer period [9]. The consequent workload sustained by nurses, physicians, and other hospital employees in emergency departments, medicine departments, and intensive care departments was huge. Indeed, 42% of deaths occurred in hospitals, while 35% and 19% of deaths occurred at home and in nursing homes, respectively.
Finally:
I think it’s a valid point that New Orleans was and should have been much more prepared for a hurricane. That was a disaster that was on the books, practically a known entity even before it happened. The hurricane that landed wasn’t even that severe. Like I said, the whole vacation angle on the France Heatwave is just the easy blame route.
What exactly is your point here? That New Orleans was totally mismanaged? That building a city below sea level in a hurricane region is stupid?
Yep. And?
