THE FRENCH HEATWAVE DEATH TOLL IS NOW UP TO 15,000. The death toll is appalling. So is the French government’s fecklessness in allowing it to happen.

UPDATE: I wonder if it will get a Newsweek cover?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oxblog observes:

[D]ear God. Those numbers would be horrifying coming from a third-world country. Coming from France, they’re just astounding. So far, the only political fallout has been the resignation of a single civil servant, France’s equivalent of the surgeon-general. The fact that there has not been a more serious political fallout from what is, after all, a massive failure of France’s healthcare system, is astonishing.

Astonishing, to say the very least.