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Study Puts Puerto Rico Death Toll From Hurricane Maria Near 5,000
Perhaps 5,000 people died in Puerto Rico in 2017 for reasons related to September's Hurricane Maria, according to a study that dismisses the official death toll of 64 as "a substantial underestimate."
A research team led by scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health didn't simply attempt to count dead bodies in the wake of the powerful storm. Instead, they surveyed randomly chosen households and asked the occupants about their experiences.
From that approach, they concluded that between Sept. 20 and Dec. 31, 2017, there were 4,645 "excess deaths" — that is, deaths that would not have occurred if the island hadn't been plunged into a prolonged disaster following the devastating storm.
But the estimate isn't as precise as the figure implies. The researchers calculate there is a 95 percent likelihood the death toll was somewhere between about 800 and 8,500 people. They say about 5,000 is a likely figure.
Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (open, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1803972) (DX)
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:17AM (34 children)
Uh huh. Between 800 and 8,500. That is a Hell of a deviation there. I'm calling bullshit on this one. Misuse of statistics, fifty yard penalty.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:33AM (22 children)
Not even that, look at how they are redefining "death from hurricane". It is now anything someone may say on a survey was somehow related to that life event.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:53AM (21 children)
If someone dies because the power to their essential life-preserving equipment failed due to the hurricane, is that a hurricane death?
I think what's happening now is that the definition of death due to hurricane is changing from: "died due to being hit by moving object powered by hurricane" to "died to to unusual event that was caused by hurricane". IMHO, the latter definition is more appropriate.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:04AM (7 children)
So then why stop counting on December 31st?
Died because of heat exhaustion the next summer while fixing the roof ripped off in September?
Surely you'd want to count that as well, right?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:12AM (5 children)
(Score: 1, Redundant) by frojack on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:21AM (4 children)
They couldn't get it in the past so they just made up deaths?
So the data exists now, what does it say?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:35AM (3 children)
The paper was probably already written and sent in. If you find a news organization that bothered to do actual journalism and find the update to report it along with this paper let us know.
What made up deaths are you referring to? I think you should just skim the paper to get the basics...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:04PM (2 children)
Well, wswswswsws is obviously biased (and I like they don't try to hide it with outright deception like the MSM), but they seem to do real journalism. New estimates put real death toll from Hurricane María in Puerto Rico near 5,000 [wsws.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:48PM (1 child)
That doesn't include the government estimates for Jan - May 2018 they say should be available at the end of the paper. Also,
They don't link to a transcript of whatever speech they are referring to, but either way we can see this research is advocacy cloaking itself in science. I also have no doubt the PR gov is fiddling with statistics (which were after all the "numbers of the state", invented for the state to fiddle with) for whatever reasons they have too. I don't see how that excuses this other junk research though. Junk research is literally taking over and drowning out any decent research on almost every topic these days.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:45AM
So where's the same study done for Katrina and how many additional deaths did it find?
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:26PM
So then why stop counting on December 31st?
Because they were comparing the results to a baseline rate from the previous year that also ended December 31st. And, then, they started counting on Jan 17th.
This is all very basic science that you're trying really hard to ignore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:05AM
Nope, that is already how it was supposed to be counted. Even if you missed your medication for a few days and die months or years later it still counts under their definition. Its just a matter of the person filling out the survey making that attribution. Look at the survey in the supplement of the paper.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:43AM (10 children)
FTFY. Pretty tenuous. And unless someone does this for every disaster, which would be an extraordinary effort, it doesn't generate a comparable measure. I think that's what's really the problem with the process. How many people would have died, say during the many hurricanes with significant death count of the past few decades by this metric? We'll probably never know.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:12PM (9 children)
And unless someone does this for every disaster, which would be an extraordinary effort, it doesn't generate a comparable measure.
Good thing organizations like the CDC know a lot more about this stuff than you do, then, eh? Because, doing this for every disaster is what they already do.
A Reference Guide for Certification of Deaths in the Event of a Natural, Human-induced, or Chemical/Radiological Disaster [cdc.gov]
An indirectly related disaster death occurs when the unsafe or unhealthy conditions present during any phase of the disaster (i.e., pre-event or preparations, during the actual occurrence, or post-event during cleanup after a disaster) contribute to a death (2).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:58PM (7 children)
What makes you think that is what was measured here? Did you look at the survey before posting this?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:11PM (6 children)
What makes you think that is what was measured here? Did you look at the survey before posting this?
Yes, I did.
That link I provided is a citation from the paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:02PM (5 children)
So you think if someone couldn't get a medication for a few days and then dies months later the cdc definition you quoted says this should be counted as a death due to hurricane? Because that is what is counted in this survey.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:18PM
Ah, look under the "Time periods" heading here (can't copy paste it...):
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/28/6/1124/771525 [oup.com]
So they punted on it, leaving it up to whoever fills out the report.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:21PM (3 children)
Because that is what is counted in this survey.
So you're saying the just ignore the answer to this one?
DELAY IN MEDICAL CARE
6) Did the hurricane lead to any of the following problems among members in your household that
didn’t exist before the hurricane? (If so, for how many days?)
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:30PM (2 children)
Yep, the definitions are worthless without a timeframe, literally anything that someone dies of after surviving a disaster could be linked to it. It is all up to the opinions of medical examiners for this system to make sense.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:59PM (1 child)
Interesting how the timeframe can be too long while simultaneously not existing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @08:58PM
The timeframe does not exist in the guidelines, the person filling out the form (usually a medical examiner, in this case family members) can use whatever they want.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 31 2018, @12:25PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:03PM
If someone dies because the power to their essential life-preserving equipment failed due to the hurricane, is that a hurricane death?
Yes. But more important that any given anecdote is that you use the same methodology as other studies so that you can directly compare the impacts.
FTA: The household survey is a widely accepted technique for estimating casualties following a disaster.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fadrian on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:49AM (8 children)
Somehow, I think that the Harvard School of Public Health have a bit more statistical credibility than you. Show us your error bars and justify them, if you have any. Otherwise, as usual, you're just blathering.
That is all.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by frojack on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:12AM (2 children)
Show me the graves.
Where are the death certificates?
PR isn't exactly the wild west where you shovel someone under and tie two random sticks together for a cross.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:25PM (1 child)
WTF is your problem? Is it some being scary liberal conspiracy to make you feel bad about Puerto Rico? Or can you simply not handle the fact that Trump fucked it up YET AGAIN? Or lets go for the gold star, is it simply that PR is full of brown people?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 31 2018, @12:29PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:35AM (4 children)
Why are you ignoring that spread? That didn't come from jmorris, it came from the Harvard School of Public Health, which you claim has "statistical credibility".
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday May 31 2018, @01:19AM (3 children)
I'm not ignoring the spread. They actually have one; jmorris didn't.
You know, hanging around with conservatives seems to cause bad things to happen to people - look at half of Trump's staff and at Rosanne's crew. If I were you, I'd rethink your beliefs before they lead to similar outcomes for you. I don't think they actively try to harm folks around them (that's for the people of color they govern), but once you promote yourself as an asshole, there's just that much less room for cover.
That is all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:43AM (2 children)
Yet here you are. The point is that these statistics come out of the box broken with an order of magnitude difference between high and low. jmorris doesn't have to provide his own deceptive statistics in order to note that.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday May 31 2018, @09:39AM (1 child)
Maybe you don't know anything about statistics and error bars, but my MS was just about nothing but stats. And, yes, studies with those kinds of error bars can be valid. More importantly, in most cases the ultimate results show something close to the mean of the set of stats - not results below or above the error bars. Your administration is LYING about people's deaths. Preventable deaths, as PR got much less aid from FEMA than FL or TX in their storms. What the hell does that moron have to do before you stop supporting him? Start WWIII? Or would that be OK, too?
That is all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 31 2018, @12:39PM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:58AM (1 child)
When do you close the counting window? Why stop at December 31?
Why not keep counting till everybody has lights back on and the roof repaired.?
PR is not like some jungle Tribe that digs a hole and tosses both grandma and grandpa and their dog in.
The civil authorities are not that incompetent.
On the other hand...
I'm sure if there were a death benefit in the offing, even anecdotally, Uncle Jimmie and Aunt Maria could take to the woods for an afternoon or go live with Jimmie's brother on the other side of the island for a while.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:31PM
Yup, sympathy for white people and suspicion for brown people. You're a prejudiced person, should probably start being honest with yourself.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:15AM
Those who were demonstrably killed _during_ the hurricane get $3,500 each for decent burials.
PR's suicide rate skyrocketed a while after the hurricane, as many residents gave up hope that they would ever get water, power, phone service or decent food.
This according to an in-depth article from a publication whose name I sadly do not recall.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 30 2018, @04:51PM
Lyingest. Administration. Ever.