It is also a rather useless way of comparing death tolls, because in order to evaluate the relative scale of Hurricane Maria, the same method would have to be used to measure other natural disasters, likely increasing their estimated death tolls as well.
The media reported the new estimate as if it were an actual confirmed death toll — with CNN taking care to note that the new number was released near the anniversary of Katrina. The Puerto Rican governor, under heavy political pressure due to the slow pace of the island’s recovery, officially revised the death toll to match the estimate.
That gave the media an excuse to throw out science and statistics, and to report the 2.975 number as an established fact — even though it was just an estimate based on a statistical model, and three times higher than all but one of the previous estimates.
The AP reported earlier this week that “3,000 people died in Puerto Rico” in Hurricane Maria — as if it were a proven fact. It did not indicate that the number was simply one estimate among many, and that its evidence was a controversial statistical model.
On Thursday, the AP — with a touch of chutzpah — accused the president of stating “without evidence” that the “Puerto Rico hurricane death count is [a] plot by Democrats to make him look bad.”
Great post thanks for taking the time to put together a well reasoned post. There is a lot to unpack and instead of quoting everything I’m going to just quote the specifics I’m responding to.
For reference, what would you say is the actual death toll from Katrina? Searching google for “death toll Katrina” has 1833 as the first result. CNN utilizes numbers from this study:
Hurricane Katrina deaths, Louisiana, 2005. Which puts the deaths at 986 total. The neat thing about this study is that it used the same methdology as GWU study recently released about Puerto Rico and Maria. A study was performed after hurricane Sandy. A link is
here. To be fair, I’ll admit, that sandy, which I picked because it was one of the few major hurricanes during the Obama administration, does not use the same methodology to assess death tolls that were used in the studies on Katrina and Maria. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure conspiracy worthy, due primarily to the location and data available for all three locations.
From your post it seems you that your biggest beef was that the 3000 number was not adequately presented with caveats to allow for people to realize that this number has changed from the initial and subsequent estimates. A quick search of results for the recent reporting, CNN, WashingtonPost, WSJ, USAToday, all mention the report, often including the methdology, as well as the fact that it varies widely from the original estimates presented immediately after the impact.
Where you see Democratic and media directed effort to make the President look bad, I see media companies reporting a study that used the same methodology used to determine overall death toll for Katrina at the time of the reports release. Studies into the death toll related to storms take time to compile. I’m not sure that the timing of the report is as conspiracy based as it is spurred by the current events. There is a current massive hurricane bearing down on the US. The president essentially said that a report by a well known college is fake and out to get him.
I think in the end, like most of the controversies around Trump, he has made this way worse, and stretched out coverage and brought a spotlight to the issue because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.