Opinion | The Tragedy at This Year’s Hajj Is Just the Beginning - The New York Times

In April 2020, when New York City was the “Covid capital of the world,” 815 New Yorkers died from the disease on the city’s deadliest day. A potter’s field burial site on Hart Island was receiving 24 bodies each day, as many as the city typically used to bury there in a week. Last month in Karachi, Pakistan, temperatures approached 120 degrees Fahrenheit and hospitals reportedly treated thousands for heatstroke. A nonprofit operating four mortuaries registered 128 deaths in a single day, mostly of people on the margins of society. The next day it registered 135. There are no reliable citywide death totals, but over a five-day period the Edhi Foundation, which handles about 40 daily deaths in more normal times, says it took in 568 bodies. Last weekend, the heat came home for Americans. In June, more than one-third of the country’s population was under extreme heat advisories, but immediately after Independence Day things intensified. In Palm Springs, Calif., temperatures reached a recor

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• Swaminathan Gurumurthy