Normally one counts up the bodies, makes a list and checks it twice. But nothing in Puerto Rico is normal.
Reported here:
Researchers at George Washington University determined last month that Hurricane Maria alone resulted in 2,975 'excess deaths' in Puerto Rico.
That finding wasn't the result of a traditional death-toll accounting, but a public health study that compared mortality in the six months following the storm with the number of deaths that would have been expected if it had not hit the island.
'The difference between those two numbers is the estimate of excess mortality due to the hurricane,' the scientists wrote.
