alt Hacker NewsI guess northern Europe must be an unpopulated wasteland where everybody's health just instantly declines.
I find these explanations to these studies so bizarre. We know that there are large populations living significantly further north, who don't get sunlight in the morning in winter, no matter whether there's DST or not. We also know that they get almost perpetual light during summer. If these explanations were true then you would expect a country like Sweden to have an impact on life expectancy and illness from this. But it's not. It's about as rich as Canada and has about the same life expectancy.
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I mean it's possible for there to be bad health effects from something without it outright killing everyone. This is why things like hygiene are tough! You can have terrible hygiene and still be alive for a long time.
Perhaps if Sweden adopted a different policy it would have an even longer life expectancy!
The European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), European Sleep Research Society (ESRS), and Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) put out a joint statement that recommends all-year Standard Time in the EU:
* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...
I would hazard to guess some of those folks have looked at data for northern Europe and took it into account when forming their conclusions.