Heat waves fall hardest on poor and elderly, experts say | Hacker News Reader

Heat waves fall hardest on poor and elderly, experts say

nbcnews.com

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Is there any calamity that affects the young and the rich the most?

Some diseases can be worse for the young because their immune system is more active. As for the rich, affluenza.

The 1920 flu pandemic?

Young, yes. Being rich definitely didn't help very much but I don't think it hurt you either.

Diabetes was historically a rich person disease

Also gout and constipation. But it is the other way around now.

Not having to strive - there's plenty of people who inherit money and have great educations that never amount to anything and live lonely lives without a family.

Still better to cry in Lamborgini than in a VW Polo. Being sad because you are lonely and being devastated because you cannot feed your children because you are too poor, watching them die on your arms. Those are two different spectrums of being sad. Anyone can say what he wants, but having enough money in current world can ammas to 99% of everything that matters to be happy in life.

Yep - existential crises (e.g. a lot of Silicon Valley right now)

Poor people experience even deeper existential crises, but they usually don't get to write novels or essays in influential publications.

If given the opportunity to do so, the words and metaphors they'd choose would be alien to most people who aren't in poverty.

Metaphors are the easiest, quickest way to evoke empathy, but when you're poor, your daily life is significantly different, and finding shared metaphors to convey your feelings is harder. Then there's the language barrier (style, spelling, vocabulary, grammar).

Speaking of the US alone: most born again Christians emerge from some kind of existential crisis. I don't believe the underlying crisis ever goes away, but it's turned into some kind of tool/resource.

Cuts to higher education. Rent control. Contraction of high-paid knowledge work labor markets like tech and finance.

Rent Control in NYC actually disproportionately benefits wealthier New Yorkers.[1]

https://ny.curbed.com/2019/6/12/18662844/rent-regulation-stu...

Private plane crashes, risky Instagram selfies in exotic locations, populist coups, malfunctioning automated systems in Bond-villain-style underground lairs.

I’m not sure whether they fall under ‘calamity’, but: breaking your neck playing polo? Dying in a helicopter crash? Car accidents at over 300 km/hour?

Inheritable diseases that richer families can survive easier, making them more prevalent in richer families, such as Haemophilia may be better examples.

It's not just heat waves. This year, during February in Indiana (and across the Midwest US) we had severe long term polar winds. Absolute temps were around -5F (-20.5c) with dips down to -10f(-23c). And we're talking south-central Indiana here.

And now, we're talking about the hottest June in history. Anchorage Alaska hit 90f(32c). And now, we have deadly heat waves across the Midwest and up the eastern seabed. We're losing the buffer of milder summers and milder winters, and gaining worsening extremes each year.

The weather and climate is going to be the thing that kills people, more than wars, disease, and other selectors. And those with money can buy protection from it. The rest of us... well...

What we have is a normal summer heat wave being pumped up as a natural disaster. It's completely normal for all of the affected areas to experience humid, low-90-degree days in the summer. Pull up a weather map right now: The only 100-degree readings are in the lower plains, where they're expected in the summer. It's not even a remarkable heat wave, let alone an indicator of a spiraling climate. The climate is spiraling, but it's not helpful to conflate seasonal weather with climate.

The troubling thing is that when the media and weather service cry wolf, the public is conditioned to not take their warnings seriously. In years past, the weather service would issue a Heat Advisory for a heat wave like this, not an Excessive Heat Warning, which is reserved for the most dangerous conditions. The warning was issued too early, with insufficient forecast confidence; temperatures have underperformed in the midwest. A warning for a truly dangerous heat wave will eventually go unheeded.

> Criteria for an Excessive Heat Warning is a heat index of 105 °F or greater that will last for 2 hours or more.

Seems fine to me.

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