A Nowdemic of Summer Heat Deaths: Being prepared can prevent them.
In the summer of 2022 heat waves in Europe led to preventable deaths of 62,000 people. China can expect an average of 7000 deaths each year due to high summertime temperatures. Three days of severe heatwaves have been torching Southern Australia this week from 27-29 Feb. The Southern Hemisphere is baking right now and soon it will be the Northern Hemisphere’s turn. Countries are going through planning for the “next pandemic” based on lessons learned from infectious epidemics. Yes, there will be another infectious pandemic sometime in the future, but the nowdemic is stalking us now and most of this summer's deaths do not need to happen. This is a certain and imminent problem that very few local governments are preparing for. One prong of prevention for the long term is mitigating climate change by greening up energy use. The second prong of prevention is getting our public health officials and city planners to do their jobs to partner with those at most risk to plan w