Posted on 05/29/2018 8:47:51 AM PDT by cll
CAGUAS, PUERTO RICO — At least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its devastation across Puerto Rico last year, according to a new Harvard study released Tuesday, an estimate that far exceeds the official government death toll, which stands at 64.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts across the U.S. territory, which was thrown into chaos after the September hurricane wiped out the electrical grid and had widespread impacts on infrastructure. Some communities were entirely cut off for weeks amid road closures and communications failures.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
There is no methodology. They called households to ask if someone died. Needless to say they didn't call households on an unaffected tropical island as a control (or anything close to that).
The study found that everyone that has consumed or will consume vegetables will eventually die..
C'mon, if that isn't self-inflicted misery, what is?
“Hopefully, PR will be more prepared in the future for a bad hurricane, given their location.”
__________________________
Right, you betcha. And, their government keeps on rolling along. Just as leftist here in the US tend to avoid any catastrophe by ignoring it.
Of course this is an estimate. But if the PR government would release its hard data, we would know for sure.
I repeat how does "Most everyone knew that the death toll was in the thousands" when no one really knows anything of substance?
If you recall it was demanded of FEMA that they send 10,000 body bags to New Orleans because everyone in the superdome gave testimonials of rampant death there and throughout the city.
Actually, they would each have a death certificate....required by Puerto Rican law. Since these don’t exist....they never occurred. Anyone suggesting PR is a 3rd-world country....well, I might agree it’s 2nd-world but it’s not like some African ‘pretender-republic’.
Are they counting the tens of thousands who have “migrated” to FLA since then? PR is run by LIB idiots.
You don’t even know where they went, or if they stayed there.
Your port call was in Old San Juan, and damage to Old San Juan and the rest of the capital city was minimal compared to the island interior. Puerto Rico is the size of Connecticut. There are six or more other major ports around the island.
“I repeat how does “Most everyone knew that the death toll was in the thousands” when no one really knows anything of substance?”
Because most people were looking where to take their sick and elderly, after their home life support systems failed. And for two weeks we didn’t have anywhere to take them to for care. When the USN Comfort arrived, these people were either cured, sent to the mainland, or dead.
Wouldn’t PR have been better served if all of the workers and supplies were dedicated to fixing the rest of the island? There were other ports of call that were severely damaged by the hurricane. At them, the number of cruise ships in port was very limited.
It was very important to us to restart our tourism industry as soon as possible (we started porting cruise ships as early as October 4). People needed jobs more than anything else.
Dear God, what an horrific number.
I’ll read the article, but I honestly don’t trust Harvard or WaPo to be factual. It’s likely going to take time to learn the truth- if we ever do.
God be with those who mourn.
Their numbers are indirect deaths... Inability to get to health services due to infrastructure failure.
God.
They were covering up the real number? The Feds or Puerto Rico?
I agree with you 100% about how important it is to keep tourism going and the port a sought-after choice for cruise ships. At St Martaans and St Thomas, there were less cruise ships and a lot of indication that construction was the priority. A lot of cruisers do care about the islands we visit, want to know their history, people, and current life. I’m just saying that a city that wasn’t more visibly involved in reconstruction was uncomfortable.
The cruise port is purpose built for cruise ships. The container port is across the bay and has the equipment to unload cargo ships. PR is extremely dependant on tourist $ so naturally it is a priority to get the cruise port open. If you really wanted to help you would have gone ashore ate in a local establishment, had a few Barcadis, and bought some trinkets
I agree with you.
Roughly 4 million population - average age at death around 75.
1,000 people a week are gonna die hurricane or no hurricane.
Remember what Mark Twain said:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.
The Harvard researchers are assuming that every death in PR between Sept. 20 and Dec. 21, 2017 above and beyond the number of deaths that took place in PR between Sept. 20 and Dec. 31, 2016 was *caused* by Hurricane María or its afternath. But correlation does not equal causation, and there might be other explanations for the increase in the death rate that the researchers found (plus, if the death rate went down in subsequent months, maybe the hurricane’s aftermath merely accelerated the inevitable demise of some people by a couple of months). It’s lazy science to blame everything on the hurricane, and it serves to exculpate persons who have at least partial responsibility for some of these deaths. If someone died in December because of health problems that were exacerbated by lack of electricity, the the main causes of death were (i) the human incompetence and government bureaucracy that caused it to take over two months to return electric power to such area (BTW, there are parts of PR that still din’t have electricity; is that still María’s fault?) and (ii) such person and his relatives not doing enough to remedy the situation. I stuck it out without a power generator despite being without power back for over two months, but I didn’t have a daughter on dialysis.
So I don’t believe that Hurricane María caused over 4,000 deaths, at least not as we normally use the word “cause” in reference to natural disasters. The spike in deaths from September to December more likely was due to the terrible state of Puerto Rico’s power and water infrastructure prior to the passage of the hurricane, the incompetence of the persons in charge of getting things back to normal, and, yes, some people sitting around waiting for the government to solve their problems.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.