Some observations:
(1) the death toll in MS is something over 200. People in MS are far more efficient and did not have to deal with extended flooding, so their search and recovery is far more complete.
Additionally, MS actually received the full brunt of the storm. People in MS were far more likely to be drowned by the intial storm surge, to be crushed inside destroyed houses, etc. I would expect the highest natural death toll from this area and so far it's mercifully light compared to the sheer destruction of so many homes.
(2) We've seen exaggerations before. In the aftermath of 9/11, weeks later, people were still guessing that 25,000 were dead. It was only 11% of that number.
(3) Some of the stuff being said by news commentators makes absolutely no sense - i.e. that once the waters recede we'll find bodies at the bottom. Bodies float. That's why murderers weigh bodies down when they want to hide them in water.
Also, we keep seeing the makeshift grave of that poor woman named Vera again and again. We haven't seen any more than that one.
Also, we've seen the single body on I-10 again and again and again - not too many other corpses lying by the side of the road, just like there's not too many other makeshift graves.
I'm sure there are poor unfortunates dead inside some houses, but most people seem to have made it to roofs.
(4) The quickie funerals being described in the press are of very atypical cases - one of an NO policeman who fled the floods and shot himself in Baton Rouge, one of a man who refused to evacuate and was found dead in NO because he slept in the same room as his emergency generator and suffocated from carbon monoxide.
I'm hoping that all this talk is overblown.
And the democrats will say that Bush is hiding the real numbers of dead from the public.
I've been saying no more than 2000 in N.O.
I wonder if the final death toll will be inflated with "estimates" of how many may never be found. I'll bet anything they won't be able to show a pathology report and a death certificate for everyone said to be killed. It will be the Census issue all over again, where estimates are deemed to be more accurate than an actual count.
"I will reiterate: the death toll will be far, far lower than the media is spinning it to be."
I've been saying this for many days. I said there would be about 300 in NO at worst 500 ....TOPS.
How do I know? Ive been around a dead body(cow)
The strench alone from the mythical "10,000" dead victims would be so intolerable that nobody could get into the city with a filtered mask.
In extreme heat, bodies tend to bloat and actually burst, spewing its liquidified contents.
The city stinks but that is from sewage and a witch's brew of chemicals in the water. Plus a few bodies.
But not in the numbers the chicken little politicans cry about.
Now in Miss., it may be a bit higher, when ithe rural areas are finally reached.
Miss. will be higher than NO.
Very good re-cap of the facts. Thanks.
I suspect you are right. The "tens of thousands" of corpses would be evident by now, if they existed. It is looking like some number of hundreds, maybe, not thousands. I'm sure the media will be quite disappointed as their body-hunting cameramen come back empty-handed.