The death rate in Puerto Rico is 8.7 per 1000. The population is about 3.3 million. That means that in the past year you would expect 29,000 to die. Could you say that more than the expected number died? Maybe. But unless each cause of death was tracked, it would be very difficult to place blame either on the hurricane or post-hurricane supply failures.
That’s the problem. the CDC has a methodology to track disaster-related deaths. THe claim is that the medical profession in PR is poorly trained, and has NOT been filling out death certificates properly, so they don’t trust the numbers.
That’s why the PR government commisioned the study, to see if there was another way to guess how many of those deaths were related to the hurricane.
The problem is, some uptick in deaths do not fit the definition the CDC has, so while you could say the CDC undercounts, or say the study overcounts, the real problem is you can’t compare them.
So we ahve this bizarre situation where, under current proclamation, the PR hurricane is now the 3rd most devastating one in history, even though most people think that, using the criteria of this study, Katrina would easily double it. Although I can’t find that quote now, so maybe I imagined it.