Officially, the government of Puerto Rico has blamed Hurricane Maria for 64 deaths, but a new study out Tuesday found that the powerful storm was responsible for more than 4,500 deaths.
Hurricane Maria Killed Thousands More Than Official Toll in Puerto Rico: Study
The study done published by the New England Journal of Medicine is titled “Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria” and it is a survey, not hard numbers.
We conducted a randomized survey of 3299 households from January 17 through February 24, 2018. The target sample of approximately 3000 households was calculated to detect a 50% increase in the annual mortality rate from a historic (September 20 through December 31) baseline rate of 8 per 1000,21 with 80% power at a significance level of 0.05.
Even the local government admits that the 64 deaths is a low and incomplete number, but to throw an estimation generated by a poll as gospel? It continues:
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,11 often delaying the issuance of death certificates.
Imagine that, you need proof of death to count the bodies, How dare they?
Furthermore, although direct causes of death are easier to assign by medical examiners, indirect deaths resulting from worsening of chronic conditions or from delayed medical treatments may not be captured on death certificates. These difficulties pose substantial challenges for the accurate and timely estimation of official all-cause hurricane-related mortality. The Puerto Rican government has commissioned an external review of the death-registry data as a result of these issues.12,13
I like this. So six months later, if somebody is killed during the commission of a crime and it gets blamed because there are not enough cops in the area, the official culprit is the hurricane.
I saw this type of poll used in Iraq some years ago. It made the news that the experts said there were over 2 million civilian deaths and their methodology was similar: just ask people if they knew or suspected somebody was dead. That the answer from 5 different people could be about only one individual but tagged as 5 never crossed their minds.
I always wondered what happened with 2 million bodies and they are not that easy to bury and as far as I know, there were no cremation facilities anywhere in the country.
No power, no running water in many areas for months? Not Days, Months.
Damn right mortality increased. It was mostly in the old, the infirm, those with chronic health conditions, and the very young. How many died just from stupid things like slips and falls in the dark? How many total? I have no idea. Corrupt Uncaring Government Kills.
Remember the 2003 August Heat Wave in France? 14,000 Dead Old Folks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
Be a prepper. Make a Plan for power outages, storms, and disasters. It may save your family’s lives.
“No power, no running water in many areas for months? Not Days, Months.”
It’s all Trump’s fault because he backed out of the Paris accords and of course global warming causes hurricanes. No mention of the corrupt, socialist (but I repeat myself) government apparatchiks blocking rebuilding the power grid because they didn’t get a big enough kickback and withholding emergency supplies from the rural areas so they could sell them on the black market.