Just wanted to share this with you:
"Nearly 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico linked to Hurricane Maria, new report says" by Sheri Fink New York Times August 28, 2018
They quietly acknowledged it online at the beginning of August.
NEW YORK — A long-awaited report on the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, made public Tuesday by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, was commissioned by the governor of Puerto Rico after The New York Times and other media outlets and researchers last year estimated that the death count far exceeded the government’s official toll of 64.
The new research was performed independently of the government.
“Hurricane Maria was a catastrophe of historic proportions, as never seen or lived before in the United States,” Carlos Mercader, executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, said in an e-mailed statement. He said the new analysis “is sobering, and its insights make clear that Congress and FEMA must work with us to establish a better system for the preparation and distribution of supplies ahead of future disasters.”
The researchers released few details of their methodology or analysis, making it difficult to assess the quality of their work, which was carried out at a cost of $305,000 and included an analysis of how the government certified deaths and communicated about them.
They wrote that “national and international experts in different fields” had reviewed their methods. The report has not yet been subjected to the more rigorous process of being published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, though it has been submitted for publication.
A study by Harvard researchers published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year estimated the death toll could range from 800 to more than 8,000 people, and was based on a household survey.
The new study has two main differences from most previous analyses. Researchers looked at deaths for a longer time period, from September 2017 — when two hurricanes, Irma and Maria, hit the island in close succession — until February 2018. Deaths continued to be elevated throughout this period.
The researchers also adjusted their calculations for what they estimated to be an 8 percent drop in the population after the storm and prolonged power failures, when thousands of people fled for the mainland.....
Well, at least the power is back on now.
--more--"
Also see:
Nine Puerto Ricans are killed as military cargo plane crashes on road in Georgia
The aid plane was on its final trip. Hmmm.
