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posted by mrpg on Wednesday May 30 2018, @05:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the Unincorporated-territory dept.

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.

Also at NYT and The Hill.

Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (open, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1803972) (DX)


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:35AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:35AM (#686136)

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:04PM (#686237)

    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].

    The leading cause of death according to the study was from disruptions to medical services. This finding was consistent across all categories irrespective of the remoteness of the location, with 31 percent of households reporting a medical issue. The study found that “the most frequently reported problems were an inability to access medications (14.4 percent of households) and the need for respiratory equipment requiring electricity (9.5 percent), but many households also reported problems with closed medical facilities (8.6 percent) or absent doctors (6.1 percent). In the most remote category, 8.8 percent of households reported that they had been unable to reach 911 services by telephone….”

    The statistical data from the report provide important scientific backing to what everyone on the island and around the world already knows: that the true scale of fatalities is far beyond the number claimed by government officials….

    While valuable in exposing the absurd official government count, these previous studies were extremely limited in the type of data they were able to collect. Reports [wsws.org] [link preserved] from funeral homes could not account for those who buried their dead without assistance due to lack of electricity or blocked roads. The study conducted by Penn State was done based on death certificates. However, in Puerto Rico, every disaster-related death must be confirmed by the Institute of Forensic Sciences. This requires that bodies be brought to San Juan or that a medical examiner travel to the local municipality to verify the death, often delaying the issuance of death certificates.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:48PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:48PM (#686252)

      That doesn't include the government estimates for Jan - May 2018 they say should be available at the end of the paper. Also,

      In his trip to the island last October, President Trump could hardly contain his indifference to the working class, telling the people of Puerto Rico that the destruction from Hurricane María did not constitute “a real catastrophe like Katrina” because the death count was so low.

      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

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:45AM (#686595) Journal

        Also,

        In his trip to the island last October, President Trump could hardly contain his indifference to the working class, telling the people of Puerto Rico that the destruction from Hurricane María did not constitute “a real catastrophe like Katrina” because the death count was so low.

        So where's the same study done for Katrina and how many additional deaths did it find?