Trump a 10? No, Say Puerto Rico's 4,600 Dead

[Gothmog]

Trump did nothing to help Puerto Rico and as a result 4600 American citizens died https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-30/trump-a-10-no-say-puerto-rico-s-4-600-dead

On Tuesday the New England Journal of Medicine published a new estimate of the lives lost on Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria: about 4,600. That stands in stark contrast to the 16 deaths the president cited in October, and the official death toll of 64 that the Puerto Rican government has stood by for months.

To put the tragedy in context, consider the death tolls from other recent hurricanes.

Hurricane Camille, one of the most brutal hurricanes to hit the U.S. in the late 20th century, made landfall in Mississippi in 1969 and left about 260 dead. Hurricane Andrew killed about 65 people when it swept across the Bahamas and Florida in 1992. Hurricane Irma left about 130 dead last year; Hurricane Harvey, a companion of sorts to Irma, killed about 110. Hurricane Katrina, which Trump cited as benchmark of catastrophe, left about 1,800 dead after it made landfall in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi in 2013. Some 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in September, 2001.

Compared to all of these events, Hurricane Maria represents an epic loss of life. And the New England Journal noted that its estimate of about 4,600 dead on Puerto Rico “is likely to be an underestimate.” It said that the “mortality rate remained high through the end of December 2017, and one third of the deaths were attributed to delayed or interrupted health care.”

Reporters on the ground in Puerto Rico last fall saw this coming. As they toured the island after Maria hit, it was obvious that Puerto Rico’s heavily damaged hospital system and unreliable power grid would conspire to produce deaths well in excess of the government’s (and Trump’s) lowball figure of 16.

[Girard442]

1. Just a rough guess based on Puerto Rico's population and the predicted severity of the storm...

...would have informed anyone with a brain that the official figure was a lie.

[Matthew28]

2. This is murder

Trump should be impeached for this alone.

[lapfog_1]

3. article needs correction

Katrina was in August of 2005... not 2013.

[Gothmog]

4. From Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Leee

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

5. From Hillary Clinton

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

6. From the mayor of SanJuan

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

7. The forgotten dead of Puerto Rico

These deaths should not be forgotten. I am glad that the government of Puerto Rico has increased the death toll to over 1,000 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/06/03/the-forgotten-dead-of-puerto-rico/?utm_term=.9834e7abd301

On Friday night, the Puerto Rico Department of Health for the first time in six months released official mortality numbers related to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last September. The department counted at least 1,400 additional deaths on the island from September to December 2017 compared with the same period the previous year. That finding came three days after a Harvard University study was published that calculated some 4,600 additional deaths due to Maria. Both estimates are many times the official death count of 64 and suggest that Maria was one of the deadliest disasters in U.S. history.

Yet on the major Sunday talk shows — the purest distillation of what the media and political establishments consider worth discussing — not once was Puerto Rico mentioned. That is a disgrace.

Even before these new official and unofficial estimates, the federal and local response to the hurricane hasn’t been given the media attention it deserves. It took seven months to restore power on the island, bridges and roads were impassable for weeks or months, and hospitals were overwhelmed. All these factors hindered emergency and other medical services, and, as the authors of the Harvard study wrote, “interruption of medical care was the primary cause of sustained high mortality rates in the months after the hurricane.” Relief from the federal government has been a classic case of too little, too late. After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, Congress allocated more than $60 billion in aid within two weeks. (And the George W. Bush administration’s response to Katrina was still woeful even with all that funding.) After Hurricane Maria, Congress took almost five months to allocate a fraction of the $94 billion Puerto Rico’s government has estimated it needs.

[Gothmog]

8. Does Trump still think his response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico deserves a 10 out of 10 score

Link to tweet

[Gothmog]

9. The new court order may help further illuminate Hurricane Maria's deadly impact

Link to tweet