Between 2000 and 2019, South Asia saw over 110,000 excess deaths a year due to rising temperatures, according to a study in Lancet Planetary Health, a journal. https://t.co/CV1bnjMgMl

— Dr Maria Neira (@DrMariaNeira) April 3, 2023

The first thing to point out is that Dr Neira is Director of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the WHO.

The second thing to note is that she is telling a pack of lies.

The article in the Economist she is referring to actually says:

Between 2000 and 2019, South Asia saw over 110,000 heat-related excess deaths a year, according to a study in Lancet Planetary Health, a journal.

The Economist also wants readers to think that hot weather is killing more, as the article is headlined “India’s deadly heatwaves are getting even hotter”.

But let’s now check out the Lancet study which both Neira and the Economist refer to:

So we learn that in South Asia, there has been 111K excess, heat-related deaths, but there have also been 913K cold-related ones!

And the same pattern emerges when looking at excess death ratios:

As is usually the case with these scams, the Economist floats out a figure of 110,000 deaths due to heat, but does not give a comparison with earlier decades.

In reality the study shows that excess deaths have increased in South Asia, in stark contrast to the rest of Asia. But the cause has been an increase in cold-related deaths. Changes in heat-related deaths have been minimal.

Figure 4: Regional change in annual excess death ratio between 2000 and 2019 compared with the 2000–03 average.

Now why should that be?

Well, it turns out that temperatures in South Asia have actually been trending down since 2000:

And as the study points out, cooling has paralleled the increase in cold-related deaths there.

By contrast, in the rest of the world, a moderate increase in heat-related deaths was more than offset by a large decrease in cold-related ones:

There is not a single reference to any of this in the Economist. It is hard to think of a more misleading article than this one.

As for Dr Neira, she has got things totally upside down; excess deaths have been rising because of falling temperatures.

This piece originally appeared at NotAlotOfPeopleKnowThat.wordpress.com and has been republished here with permission.