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: 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?