Certainly, said in this way, this is a little alarming but rest assured: the situation is under control since the management, not shying away from any temporary solution, has had some refrigeration equipment installed in the hospital parking lot and, provided that it is compacted a little corpse here or there, it's good, it holds up.

While the macabre Tétris continues in Toulouse, let us note that post-mortem solutions are multiplying on the post-modern side since it is now proposed to have one's corpse composted: thanks to what one could call compost-mortem, the corpse n 'no longer takes up as much space (a good thing for Toulouse) and, an obvious ecological bonus, makes it possible to supply trees or even (why not?) a vegetable garden with mineral salts, trace elements and micro-plastics too, if the we stick to eco-conscious rumors.

While waiting for a very loose field to be created behind the Toulouse hospital, the authorities have however planned – in a fairly conformist manner, we will agree – to simply increase the capacity of the morgue from 32 to 80 bodies, which should help.

However, we will be interested in the reasons given for this overflow which we hope will be temporary: according to management, this is an essentially administrative problem, since the concern would essentially come from a “recent increase in the number of “indigent” bodies”. In short, the morgue would be overflowing because the administrative procedures are too numerous, too complex and take too long.

Faced with this information, there is no doubt that the average French person will only be astonished, knowing that the entire French administration, made up of equal parts efficiency and diligence, could not tolerate such a deviation. And then, this explanation is worth another and allows us not to focus too much on the general figures for excess mortality in France which are, INSEE is categorical, so normal that they fall into the category of “Circulate, it is there is nothing to refrigerate in a parking lot”.

From then on, we will look at the assertions of life insurance companies with an eye, if not mocking, at least serene.

Responsible for paying insurance contracts when one of their subscribers fails, the latter seem convinced of observing persistent excess mortality. Already, last year, they had explained the drop in their profits by a record level of claims in 2021, the increase having been 10,8% compared to the year 2019, the year 2020 (that of the pandemic) also showing a notable increase (of 15,4%). For 2022, the increase in premium payments seems less strong but remains, according to them, at strangely high levels while the global medical situation has officially returned to normal.

A little more worryingly, it is the mortality rate among young adults which is of concern since in 2023 it is almost 20% above what we can expect according to the CDC, with in particular an increase in cardiac mortality at all ages. Even though COVID-related causes declined in 2022, others increased, particularly stroke, diabetes, and kidney and liver disease. Moreover, this is observed in a large number of countries whose data are relatively reliable, as mentioned by Dr Campbell who goes into detail on these figures for England and other OECD countries.

It is up to the authorities to explain this high excess mortality and these disturbing coincidences. Obviously, climate change is wreaking havoc and this is where compost-mortem takes on its full importance, isn't it: at least we can hope for our carbon-related fault to be half-forgiven with this eco-sensitive process.

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