43

The man has never seen the high road.

44

Then the government has failed if they don’t have an accurate number of actual dead bodies and aan accurate number of missing/unaccounted for people and have to use an estimate.

45

They do have the total number dead over that time period. The issue is deciding how many of those deaths are related to the storm. If a death certificate lists “renal failure” as the cause of death, but the reason they died was because the dialysis center didn’t have electricity, it doesn’t show up the same way as if someone died from falling debris directly attributable to the hurricane. They’re estimating the increased deaths over non-hurricane years which are attributable to the hurricane, not the total number of deaths.

46

Good point. The problem with Sandy (which occurred in October) is that the normal seasonal variation in death rates is likely to mask any longer term effects on death rates. A difference with storms in Puerto Rico is that there is no winter weather, so even a small change in death rates is more likely to be noticeable.

I suspect that a January cold wave may result in more deaths than the claimed figures for Maria. Here is a link that shows that cold waves that last more than a day or two can significantly increase death rates:

47

Yep, a fracking ban would probably kill thousands of elderly on fixed incomes.

48

Well, you could compare the month of hurricane Sandy and the following three months with a comparable time frame in several preceding years…until you get the percentage increase you are looking for.

49

An issue is that November weather may have affected the death rates after Sandy, which makes it difficult to say what is happening.

Puerto Rico has virtually no seasonal change in temperatures. There is a wet and a dry season, but the seasonal effects are probably much less than those the northeast US.