How many people did Hurricane Maria kill in Puerto Rico?
President Trump whines he's been saddled with 2985 deaths which weren't on him--those people died later and were not killed by the hurricane.
Reporters from CNN, MS NBC, NPR have assailed him for showing indifference to the facts and making up his own reality.
But what is a fact?
And how much more about that number of 3,000 deaths do the reporters know than the President?
I had wondered about this because I have filled out death certificates and if ever there was a "garbage in/garbage out" phenomenon, death certificates have got to be it. You can trust the fact the person named is dead, and maybe even have some idea of the time of death, better for the date of death, but cause of death? Forget it.
American medicine stopped doing routine autopsies decades ago--and if you want to know what really killed somebody, that is the way. The only people who get autopsies now are "medical examiner's cases"--dead people who died unexpectedly or under suspicious circumstances. Autopsies are for determining if there was foul play.
So when you have 3,000 deaths, how do you know what those people died from?
The News Hour had an illuminating segment about how the George Washington University School of Public Health did their study which provided that number of 3,000 deaths from Hurricane Maria. Turns out, what they do is they look at the number of deaths in the months of August, September and if there are typically 5,000 deaths in August but in the month of Maria there were 8,000 deaths, then they attribute those extra deaths to the hurricane.
Individuals are not counted. No death certificates are examines. Causes of death are not assessed.
So maybe Trump has a point.
And how do you assess cause and responsibility? If a man who has bad coronary artery disease dies walking up stairs instead of being about to take an elevator because the hurricane knocked out power, is that a hurricane death?
If a woman falls down the stairs in a dark stairwell because the power is out, is that a hurricane death?
So what Trump is really complaining about is the accounting system. Personally, I have never accepted the idea that if a pitcher is yanked from a game with two runners on the bases and the relief pitcher gives up a home run, the two base runners who scored are counted against the original pitcher, not against his relief. It's sort of like that with Trump and Puerto Rico--he did not make the mess. He did not cause the hurricane damage. He did fail to help avoid subsequent suffering, and it is notable, the white people in Texas who were also hit by the hurricane got way better treatment from the United States government. But then again, those Spanish speaking, brown skinned Puerto Ricans are not Trump voters.
What strikes me is not so much the peevish Trump, but the self righteousness of the reporters and pundits, who are all in high dudgeon because they KNOW the TRUTH and Trump is denying something they are sure of, which, in fact, is not a certainty.
If we are ever going to beat Trump, it can't be with stupidity.
We have to focus on what is really wrong with him. Don't even bother to comment on really stupid tweets, or if you do, make sure everyone is laughing.
President Trump whines he's been saddled with 2985 deaths which weren't on him--those people died later and were not killed by the hurricane.
Reporters from CNN, MS NBC, NPR have assailed him for showing indifference to the facts and making up his own reality.
But what is a fact?
And how much more about that number of 3,000 deaths do the reporters know than the President?
I had wondered about this because I have filled out death certificates and if ever there was a "garbage in/garbage out" phenomenon, death certificates have got to be it. You can trust the fact the person named is dead, and maybe even have some idea of the time of death, better for the date of death, but cause of death? Forget it.
American medicine stopped doing routine autopsies decades ago--and if you want to know what really killed somebody, that is the way. The only people who get autopsies now are "medical examiner's cases"--dead people who died unexpectedly or under suspicious circumstances. Autopsies are for determining if there was foul play.
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| We need that balloon in Hampton |
So when you have 3,000 deaths, how do you know what those people died from?
The News Hour had an illuminating segment about how the George Washington University School of Public Health did their study which provided that number of 3,000 deaths from Hurricane Maria. Turns out, what they do is they look at the number of deaths in the months of August, September and if there are typically 5,000 deaths in August but in the month of Maria there were 8,000 deaths, then they attribute those extra deaths to the hurricane.
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| The base |
Individuals are not counted. No death certificates are examines. Causes of death are not assessed.
So maybe Trump has a point.
And how do you assess cause and responsibility? If a man who has bad coronary artery disease dies walking up stairs instead of being about to take an elevator because the hurricane knocked out power, is that a hurricane death?
If a woman falls down the stairs in a dark stairwell because the power is out, is that a hurricane death?
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| Not a good messanger |
So what Trump is really complaining about is the accounting system. Personally, I have never accepted the idea that if a pitcher is yanked from a game with two runners on the bases and the relief pitcher gives up a home run, the two base runners who scored are counted against the original pitcher, not against his relief. It's sort of like that with Trump and Puerto Rico--he did not make the mess. He did not cause the hurricane damage. He did fail to help avoid subsequent suffering, and it is notable, the white people in Texas who were also hit by the hurricane got way better treatment from the United States government. But then again, those Spanish speaking, brown skinned Puerto Ricans are not Trump voters.
What strikes me is not so much the peevish Trump, but the self righteousness of the reporters and pundits, who are all in high dudgeon because they KNOW the TRUTH and Trump is denying something they are sure of, which, in fact, is not a certainty.
If we are ever going to beat Trump, it can't be with stupidity.
We have to focus on what is really wrong with him. Don't even bother to comment on really stupid tweets, or if you do, make sure everyone is laughing.
While I get your point, are you arguing that unless one drowns or a tree falls and kills them, their death cannot be attributed to the hurricane? Actually what they have done with "excess deaths" makes sense, especially if the death total returns to "normal" the next month.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteAs the PBS report mentioned, there are death directly attributable to wind, falling trees etc, but there were very few, likely less than 100 of those. Then there are the "excess deaths," which likely ensued because of the subsequent loss of normal functioning of technology we have come to depend on--power, electricity, transportation. As Ryan noted, there is no shame in not being able to catch up with all this, but Trump created his own mess by whining about being blamed for those deaths. Fact is, you are not counting individual cases.
There was a wonderful TV series, "Foyle's War" about a British detective who investigated deaths in London during the Blitz, when so many people were found dead, the occasional murder got overlooked.
Puerto Rico smacks of this. When social and technological order disintegrates, figuring out who was responsible for what deaths is nigh on impossible.
Are you suggesting that 3000 "debts were settled" after Maria? Admittedly, it is impossible to know the precise number of deaths directly related to the hurricane, but it is certainly way more than 18. The "excess deaths" figure is a reasonable approximation and will get further credibility, if the numbers returned to normal a month out.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteThe 3000 number is a shorthand for the idea that after the hurricane PR was a sunk boat and the folks in the lifeboats were not rescued, were ignored. That is likely true.
But Trump does have a point that PR was a mess before the storm and the storm simply swamped an already sinking ship.
Oddly, PR is where a number of "American drugs" are made and when those factories are swamped, these drugs disappear from the market until those plants can be got up and running. When Republicans ominously warn Americans about buying inferior Canadian drugs, made in some sweat shop in India, they imply American drugs are made in pristine American factories in Peoria, where sanitation standards are high. In fact, significant numbers of drugs are made in only one factory, and some are made only in PR. So when you pay 1/3 the cost to some Canadian pharmacy, they are sending you a bottle made in the same plant as the drug you get locally, from the same factory.
So, there are functional parts of the PR economy, but there are vulnerabilities in an island which has large parts living in 3rd world conditions.
Feral dogs, for example, wander about, and rabies is still a problem there.
Of course, if PR has been neglected, is Trump not responsible?
Mad Dog
Mad Dog and Anon,
ReplyDeleteI have to say when reading a NYTimes article on this subject last week, it chilled me to the bone to think that perhaps Trump might actually have a point-that doesnt't happen often. The description of how they collected the data did cross my mind as, shall we say, "loose"...and if it did to my left leaning mind, one can be assured his base would be looking at this as one more example of fake news.
On the other hand, I agree with Anon that Trump's number of casualties is preposterous. Subsequent storm related deaths-which should be identified as such-of course should be counted. Deaths during the storm are only part of the story. More fine tuning and greater clarification of what exactly is being counted as a storm death, rather than merely comparing raw sets of numbers, seems necessary. Trump will call any number greater than his own "fake"-but for the rest of us with functioning brain cells, knowing just how many people truly lost their lives due to the storm and how, would be important for future disaster planning.
Maude
Ms. Maude,
ReplyDeleteI agree with this, but I suppose I'm addressing another point. Trump manages to divert us all from real issues by focusing on micro non issues.
Even if there were 3,000 deaths, that doesn't mean Obama would have done any better. But now he's got us talking about how data is collected.
The larger point is P.R. didn't get as much federal govt effort as Texas did because P.R. is non white non English speaking.
Mad Dog