Showing posts with label Hurricane Maria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hurricane Maria. Show all posts

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Friday, September 14, 2018

Inflated death totals from Puerto Rico study not backed up by any names or cause of death

Julie Kelly, here:

There is just one little problem with the inflated death toll: There are no names of the newly-found victims or hundreds of bodies to be buried. The GWU research team reached the higher figure by comparing predicted fatalities to observed fatalities between September 2017 and February 2018. ... Also, the researchers did not specify how the nearly 3,000 people died. Lynn Goldman, the dean of the school that produced the report, confirmed the study’s limitations, telling the Washington Post, “we can come up with a hundred different hypotheses. What we don’t have is the ability today to tell you these are the factors that caused this.” The team also noted that mortality rates in low-income areas of the country were still elevated even past the study’s time frame, which could call into question the legitimacy of blaming all excess deaths on the storm.

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Indirect deaths from hurricanes from 1963-2012 numbered 1,418 but Maria in Puerto Rico alone caused 2,911?

My mother died of old age related heart failure two days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana in 2008:


My mother wasn't counted among the 41 indirect deaths in Louisiana, for the main reason that she died in a different state.

But . . .


Looking at 59 hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin from 1963 through 2012, the study found that those systems killed a combined 1,803 people directly – by forces like flooding and airborne debris that were caused by the storm itself. But there were also a slew of lingering impacts that proved deadly in those storms, which caused 1,418 "indirect" deaths, according to the findings. ... Nearly half of the indirect deaths attributed to these 59 hurricanes were heart attacks, according to the study's data. Automobile accidents were also a major threat to life, whether the crashes occurred during evacuation or after the storm.

So we're supposed to believe tonight that about 2,911 (2,975-64) Puerto Ricans died indirectly in consequence of one storm (Maria) over the next six months according to the new math of George Washington University and Harvard University when over the course of nearly 50 years' worth of hurricanes indirect deaths for all storms combined came to just 1,418.

Sure we are.




Habeas corpus: Puerto Rico study showing 2,975 deaths not "a traditional death-toll accounting"

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. 

It's taken incompetent Puerto Rico eleven months to raise its official death toll from 64 to 2,975, just in time for the election

But in all that time incompetent Puerto Rico still hasn't made use of the millions of water bottles still sitting on a runway in Ceiba.


Puerto Rico's governor last month raised the U.S. territory's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm, which devastated the territory last September, is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.

Flashback to the story from 2 November 2017.


Bottled water can be hard to find and gets expensive, said her aunt, Maria Ortiz, 66. “If you are lucky to find some, a pack of 24 water bottles that used to be $3.99 now is about $7.50,” she said. 

They can't count, and they can't even drink.

The Hill: "Puerto Rico's government raised its official death toll which previously sat at 64"

But the culture of complaint that is Puerto Rico wasn't satisfied with the low number, so they commissioned a study to add deaths six months out from the post-hurricane period:

[A] George Washington University study commissioned by Puerto Rico's governor examin[ed] the effects of Maria in the six months following landfall in September 2017.

The long time period was used to determine the hurricane's lingering effect on deaths on the island. It compared the death rates in the post-hurricane period to other periods not affected by natural disasters.

Only in the minds of lunatics is the number of deaths from Maria 1,175 worse than from Katrina (1,800 estimated total deaths). This new methodology of liberal math is just in time for the politics of the current hurricane season, and coincides with Obama's ridiculous claim that this economic recovery is his, not Trump's.

The story is here.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Did you know food stamp recipients soared 3,639,173 in October 2017?

An increase of nearly 8.7% from September 2017, the month prior.

We now have 45.6 million on food stamps when a year ago October it was only 43.4 million.

The Florida data is up 2.58 million from September to October due to Hurricane Maria, and Texas is up 1.3 million due to Hurricane Harvey.