So then this becomes a question of: is it responsible to talk about this with the general "you" as though unhealthy young people or healthy elderly people don't exist, as the parent comment did? To create a perception of AC being generally decadent that discourages it for all, including those who may not know they need it? I'd say it's not a small caveat to elide.
Something like one out of ten people around the world is over 65. In the US, something like one out of four. That's a huge chunk of humanity, not a corner case to handwave.
No. You have to be unhealthy to the extent that it probably isn’t safe for you to live alone and walking across a room is an accomplishment. That’s when you start to worry.
Not being an overweight and sedentary young person exaggerating the suffering of being in an 80 degree room.
Your own citation, 700 deaths annually out of a country of just under 330 million.
If only ~2 in a million die of heat or heat contributed causes per year, either people without air conditioning are incredibly rare (they’re not) or there have to be fairly extreme circumstances to risk death.
Do you really need more evidence or are you just being obtuse? Do you actually think healthy or even most unhealthy adults are risking death without AC in any but the most extreme circumstances?
If you have formed the opinion that it's not warranted to omit the scorn when you talk about people using AC, or to learn more about how it might be warranted, then that's pretty much that.
If anyone else has clicked into the thread for whatever reason and wants to learn, here are resources I'd recommend. US-centric, sorry.
* https://www.nationalpartnership.org/our-work/resources/healt... - Heat and pregnancy go together really badly. This piece is kind of lobbying, so less reputable than the CDC stuff, but aggregates some pretty eye-popping statistics; citations on page 5.
* https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/heatstress/acclima.html - NIOSH has some useful recommendations about how to acclimatize to heat safely. ("acclimatize" being the individual body ramping up its ability to deal with heat – interestingly, when people in this field use the word "adapt", increasing AC penetration is one of the things that goes into that)
Something like one out of ten people around the world is over 65. In the US, something like one out of four. That's a huge chunk of humanity, not a corner case to handwave.