Lynn Goldman wants to set the record straight on the death toll from Hurricane Maria.
To set the record straight, our study was carried out with no interference whatsoever from any political party or institution. It was based on a careful examination of all of the deaths officially reported to the government of Puerto Rico between September 2017 and February 2018. Our scientists, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Puerto Rico Graduate School of Public Health, used state-of-the-art mathematical modeling to compare the total number of deaths during that time to the expected number of deaths, based on historical patterns as well as age, sex, socioeconomic status and migration from the island.
From now own, Donald Trump’s tweets on Hurricane Maria should be the go-to reference whenever you’re worrying that Trump isn’t really an idiot, he just plays one on TV. Because in the Maria-related tweets, Donald Trump tries, convicts, and condemns Donald Trump of incompetence that does not stop short of murder.
What does Trump keep insisting? That there were only “6 to 18” deaths “when I left the Island, after the storm had hit.” He’s probably right about that. The deaths from Hurricane Maria didn’t come primarily from people killed directly in the storm. If they had, if some massive storm surge had swept through San Juan or a landslide had washed cities along the northeast coast, it would have been terrible … but forgivable. That’s not what happened.
But the 2,960 people who died after Trump got on his plane and left didn’t die from wind. They didn’t die from rain. They died from neglect. They are directly Trump’s fault. And the fact that he’s flat-out saying that these people survived the storm, but could not survive his handling of the aftermath, and that he thinks this absolves him, is horrible in every direction. People who lived through 140 mph winds, days of driving rain, flooding and landslides died later, because Donald Trump came, saw, and pitched six rolls of paper towels. Trump is directly, directly complicit in the deaths of those Americans.
We do not know the exact circumstances around each of the 2,975 excess deaths that occurred. Many factors — disruption in transportation, access to food, water, medications, power and other essentials — may have contributed. In interviews, we heard many heartbreaking stories of families struggling to obtain emergency health care, power for medical devices, prescription drugs, or even food and drinking water. This is why we were not surprised to find that the highest rates of excess deaths occurred among those living in the poorest municipalities, as well as those over the age of 65, especially men.
Trump wasn’t responsible for the wind, or the flooding. But the transportation, the access to food and water, the power for medical devices — that was and is his job.
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