“For years we have known that air conditioning protects people from extreme heat, but we could only guess by how much because the available data told us who owned an air conditioner, not who could actually afford to run one,” said Kai Chen, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.
The strong protective effect of AC against heat-attributable mortality indicates the public health necessity of addressing urban heat by making AC affordable and greening urban spaces, the authors noted.
Ironically not open access facepalm
I think that type of thing already has. Chicago had a lot of heat deaths in heat waves long ago and heating centers are a big reason we have not since. we learned our lesson like with the blizzard of 79. I certainly think it prevents more deaths than occur and that would be the majority. Its combined with messaging telling people not to wait and to get to cooling centers. There is a lot good public policy can do.