I’m simply astounded noone has pitted the French for collectively taking off for Spain or wherever else they go on vacation, and leaving thousands of elderly relatives to drop dead back home in the heat wave
Though I cannot find a media source right now, I recall hearing reports in August that in some cases, families didn’t even bother to claim Grandma from the morgue when they returned home :eek:
I hate to overgeneralize, but why in the heck did we not hear about the Dutch, Germans, or Belgians going on vacation and leaving Grandma to die? What the heck is going on in with these people? Does mass agandonment of the elderly happen on this scale in New York City or Boston when we have heat waves?
So is this a case of unfair media pile on, or is something genuinely warped in French society?
I think it’s more of the former than the latter. I first heard this story a few weeks ago when it was cited by many right-wing radio talk show hosts and commentators in the U.S. as verifiable proof that the French were all callous, detestable, sub-human monsters who considered the life of their family members as no more valuable than that of a cockroach (thereby fitting perfectly into their ongoing “Hate France” campaign). Now, I’m not going to deny the fact that some French people can be pretty annoying and that they frequently do make it easy to hate them. Also, for lack of proof, I’m not going to deny that perhaps there were a few insensitive assholes in the country who cared more about their own pursuit of pleasure than the welfare of their parents or grandparents. However, the article you cited only referred to this occurring with only some of the victims. I’m not excusing the conduct of those particular people in France but I’m fairly sure you can find examples of similarly unconscionable behavior in any country (including the U.S.). However, demonizing the entire population of a country for the action of a few fuckwads is unfair and absurd.
This is the Straight Dope message board. Stick to pittings confined to why Americans suck. It means you are enlightened and intellectual. If you pit other countries, you are uncouth and bigoted.
There is currently a thread going on pitting Aldebaran. But I can see why he must have felt he would fit right in after reading some things posters write here.
Also, please be sure to use a lot of British colloquialisms (bollocks, whinge instead of whine, etc.). This will ensure that you aren’t a “typical” American, but were just unfortunate enough to have been born in this backwards ass, right wing, minority hating shithole.
Hmm. If I take this at face value, you’re an America-basher. If I take it as sarcasm, you’ve just admitted to being unenlightened and stupid. Your choice.
I don’t object to pitting the French because it’s bigoted; I object because it’s hardly worth the effort anymore. That being said, the particular circumstances which occasioned the OP are deeply tragic regardless of whether you blame the weather, the French government, the families, or some combination of the above.
Hey, France, check it out! You can even do-it-yourself. Sorry, no free shipping outside the continental USA. There are these really neat window units also. In a pinch, with people dropping dead, I’d look into a portable units.
In the alternative, back in the 19th and early 20th Century they used to wet cheesecloth and blow a fan through it. I think Louis Howard Lattimer invented that.
Well, there were an estimated 1400 death in the Netherlands caused by the heat wave. Not nearly as high a per-capita ratio as France, but pretty alarming nevertheless.
I can’t find the numbers right now, but you need to remember that most deaths occured in hospitals and retirement homes. For sure, some people were “abandoned” but don’t count that as the main factor.
For sure, this tragedy is one of spectacular blunders, but I think that the heavy French bureaucracy and system deserve the brunt of the criticism.
Several years ago, my downstairs neighbor died. I called the police when the whole building started to smell like rotten meat. He had kids. Did they come to pick him up at the morgue? No. What does this mean? Nothing.
My point was that my neighbor’s death says nothing about, in this case, the general attitude of Canadians towards the elderly. Don’t generalize from a few examples, even if they number in the hundreds.
Well, let’s think about the notorious spate of children-left-to-broil-in-the-car news reports every summer in the USA. At first glance, it would sound like we have a countryful of idiots who can’t be bothered to look in the rear seat to see if the baby’s still there, or who figure she’ll be OK while we get our haircut.
Then, when we think about it, we realize: we hear about it because it IS unusual and contrary to our normal behavior, which is to be protective of children.
As to “New York or Boston”, hey, when the USA has had massive “killer” heatwaves there have been hundreds and even thousands of elderly who died alone in their homes and lots of them who went unclaimed.
I guess, though, it’s the idea that the families were “away on vacation” that generates the shock. I guess losing touch with the old folks because your work keeps you on the move, or when you married you moved to the other coast, or you became estranged over an inheritance, is better?
But… when I think about it: these people went off on their August holiday expecting things to be normal. They’d go South for 3 weeks, then come back, and they’d check in on gramps, who was already living by himself or at the Old Folks Home, some time later. They did what they do every year, taking exactly the same precautionary measures as they did those times – which turned out to be inappropriate; this then became compounded when the Public Health system turned out to ALSO be unprepared, for which there was no excuse as the public safety professionals ought to know better.
The ones who did not even claim their dead, OTOH, are fuckwads and goat-felchers.
The OP is deliberately forgetting that there were at least 4000 dead in Italy, at least 1300 in Portugal, and large, though unconfirmed, numbers everywhere around Europe. Remember also that many of the heat-wave affected countries haven’t actually given any official numbers about the matter, some eastern European countries apparently claiming that there were no deaths at all. As the situation depends on how you read the statistics, it’s difficult to tell the exact numbers. Even in a normal summer the amount of people dying seems to correlate with temperature, and people who die because of heat are usually those that only would have few years left anyway. Saying that French society, or any other for that matter, is somehow faulty because elderly people are dying of heat is just plain exaggerating.
My mother in law was in France first week of August, and said she spent the last 4 days holed up in her room because it was too hot to go out. Place where she was staying not only didn’t have a/c, they didn’t even have fans. She got the only one, and she says it was very slow, barely moved the air.
Fans, folks. At least get some working fans. Sheesh.
“Whinge” isn’t a Britishism. It’s perfectly common in the US. This is easily the least stupid thing you said in that post, but it’s too damned hot to bother with the rest of it.
