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Trump denies 3000 died in Puerto Rico as a result of the hurricane ...

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  • #31
    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
    Since they have the actual death certificates which list the cause of death, why didn't they just use those and count up the ones that were attributable to the hurricane and follow up with the actual families?
    The cause of death on the certificate will not say "hurricane".

    Let's say an elderly person in somewhat poor health, after the hurricane lived without power for several months and drank water of dubious quality, and their health deteriorated during this time and they finally died of an infection. Their cause of death will be listed as something along the lines of infection / old age / natural causes. Did that person die as a result of the hurricane? Was it specifically the poor water quality that caused the infection? Did their health deteriorate due to the lack of power? Or was it that they were just old and were deteriorating anyway and caught a bug and died? For any given person it is often impossible to make that determination. Even with talking to their family and their doctors you often wouldn't be able to figure out whether they would have died without the hurricane. That method would be literally guessing in each case.

    But what is a much more reliable method that doesn't require case-by-case guessing is the aggregate numbers. Looking at how much the body count in PR spiked after the hurricane compared to its normal levels tells you how many people died because of the hurricane and doesn't require random guessing with individual cases as to whether a death with multiple causes was "hurricane caused" or not. So rather than go out on a limb and guess whether specific people died due to the hurricane versus not, instead the researchers content themselves with saying they can see from the numbers of death certificates issued that 2,658 to 3,290 more people died in PR after the hurricane than normally die in PR in the same time period. That number is then a much more accurate representation of the number of hurricane-induced deaths than guessing about individual cases would amount to.


    P.S. I thought Paul Ryan's press conference about the hurricane deaths today was decent:
    Paul Ryan:
    I have no reason to dispute these numbers.

    I was in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. It was a horrible storm. I toured the entire island. And it's an isolated island that lost its infrastructure and its power for a long time. You couldn't get to people for a long time on the island because roads were washed out, power was gone, and the casualties mounted for a long time. So I have no reason to dispute those numbers.

    Those are just the facts of what happens when a horrible hurricane hits an isolated place like an island.
    Last edited by Starlight; 09-13-2018, 04:05 PM.
    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
      You're really good at reading between the lines, aren't you?

      Trump shouldn't be taking much credit for the Maria response; it wasn't his job to do. The best he could do in such a scenario is direct extra resources than would normally be applied and stay out of the way. Responding to the disaster was the job of FEMA and local governments; most of the onus for problems appears to have been on the local government side of things, which should be no surprise to Puerto Ricans generally as it is notoriously corrupt.
      He had a responsibility to either directly or through his staff make sure Puerto Rico got the help it needed. The FEMA officials had a responsibilty to follow up on what was happening with the resources and to hold the Puerto Rican government accountable for how they distributed the aid received, or made use of the resources provided.

      It is simply impossible to shift all blame off of Trump and his administration and onto Puerto Rico.

      However, that isn't the actual point, as I pointed out to Rogue. The point is not that Trump is trying to assign blame outside his house. It is that he is denying those people died as a consequence of the hurricane. He is saying people are making all that up.

      And as Starlight points out. Paul Ryan gave a rational response. Trump's response is simply not.


      Jim
      Last edited by oxmixmudd; 09-13-2018, 04:08 PM.
      My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

      If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

      This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
        It is that he is denying those people died as a consequence of the hurricane. He is saying people are making all that up.
        He used to be a "birther". So I guess it's symmetry that he's now a "deather".
        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
          They didn't maintain the roads to begin with. They were basically dirt trails through the jungle which got washed out. Their electrical grid was held together with duct tape and prayers.

          And yes, they guessed at the number of deaths that should have occurred.

          Since they have the actual death certificates which list the cause of death, why didn't they just use those and count up the ones that were attributable to the hurricane and follow up with the actual families? Why guess at all? 3,000 is not such a large number that they could not follow up with direct contact.
          Over a year before Maria struck the U.S. Federal Highway Administration reported that the roads of Puerto Rico were in worse physical condition than all 50 states while also being some of the most congested. Things were so bad that they were so bad that they were seriously looking into privatizing the roads so that they could get someone to fix them, but as one of the local papers reported:

          El secretario del Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas (DTOP), Miguel Torres, dijo el miércoles, que la situación actual de consto y condiciones de la mayoría de las carreteras en Puerto Rico, está al punto de que ni si quiera los privatizadores las quieren.

          “Estamos hablando de mucho dinero que hace falta de inmediato para poner las carreteras en condiciones adecuadas. Si ese dinero se consigue, ya sea que por una concesión que haga con un tiempo considerable y le permita aumentar los peajes, eso es un modelo. Pero tiene que ser un modelo completo, no puede ser de cantito en cantito y eso es algo que tendrá que determinar la administración entrante”, dijo Torres a preguntas de la prensa.

          “Lo que pasa es que la alternativa es que el privatizador haga la inversión, pero el retorno de la inversión con lo que cobraría de los peajes no es suficiente para el privatizador recuperar la inversión. Esa es la matemática que tienen que hacer los concesionarios privados. Lo que nos han dicho hasta ahora es que la inversión es grande y habría que ver si alargando la cantidad de tiempo, permitiéndoles un aumento mucho más alto en el peaje, en vez de una vez al año, para que ese modelo de negocio sea efectivo”, añadió.

          ...

          The secretary of the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP), Miguel Torres, said on Wednesday that the current situation of the conde and conditions of most of the roads in Puerto Rico is to the point that even the privatizers do not want them.

          "We are talking about a lot of money that is needed immediately to put the roads in proper conditions. If that money is obtained, either by a concession that makes a considerable time and allows you to increase tolls, that is a model. But it has to be a complete model, it can not be cantito en cantito and that is something that the incoming administration will have to determine, "Torres told press.

          "What happens is that the alternative is for the privatizer to make the investment, but the return on investment with what it would charge from the tolls is not enough for the privatizer to recover the investment. That is the mathematics that private concessionaires have to do. What we have been told so far is that the investment is large and we would have to see if extending the amount of time, allowing a much higher increase in the toll, instead of once a year, for that business model to be effective "He added.

          [*Translation via Google*]


          And this was nothing new as another Puerto Rican paper made clear:

          By 2008, the roads in Puerto Rico were already among the most deteriorated in all US jurisdictions, according to data from the Highway Performance Monitoring System of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA.)

          According to information cited by the Oversight Board (OB,) among US states and jurisdictions, the Island is ranked 51st in the road roughness index, which serves as an indicator of the road network conditions.

          Puerto Rico has 26,862 kilometers of roadways, of which 454 kilometers are highways. According to the FHWA, around 75 km of road are in good state, 227 km are acceptable, and 100 km are in a very bad state. This last figure is roughly equal to the distance between Fajardo and Isabela.

          I'm always still in trouble again

          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
            hmm - the topic is the deaths and Trumps denial they happened as a consequence of the hurricane.
            hmm - correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you start the post I was responding to with
            Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
            Ok - so the gist of what I'm getting so far from the Trump loyalists is that it is either all Puerto Rico's fault...

            And isn't that the same tact you took in another thread
            Originally posted by lilpixieofterror View Post
            Puerto Rico failed long before Trump took office. Everyone knew the sorry state of their power grid and knew it would fall apart at the next hurricane. It was ignored by the very people trying to pass the buck from their own failure.
            Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
            I love it. Put the blame fully on the poor island nation for it's failure to recover quickly from a CAT 5 hurricane with 175 mile per hour winds!

            So it seems that you have been pretty much sneering at the fact that many if not most of the problems that PR has been suffering from after Maria are the result of a corrupt and inept local government and your opening to the post I responded to appears you were continuing down that same track .

            I'm always still in trouble again

            "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
            "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
            "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
              hmm - correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you start the post I was responding to with
              I did. I was simply trying to find out if there were any other reasons the peanut gallery had that they were using to justify the removal of all responsibility from Donald Trump for the failure in Peurto Rico.

              I mean - Trump gave himself an A+ - which pretty much means He accepts responsibility for what went down there. It's just that as a result, he is trying to redefine what went down there.

              So it seems that you have been pretty much sneering at the fact that many if not most of the problems that PR has been suffering from after Maria are the result of a corrupt and inept local government and your opening to the post I responded to appears you were continuing down that same track .
              Actually, that would be incorrect. I have not been sneering at the fact PR's poverty and poor infrastructure contributed to the difficulty of responding to the situation and to the desperate nature of what happened during and even more so after the hurricane. What I have been sneering at are the attempts by the peanut gallery here to shift ALL blame onto PR, as if every year two hurricanes back to back decimate the island.

              What I have also been pointing out is that Trump's actions, or rather inaction, his choice to virtually ignore PR rather than work aggressively to help it, has made the situation much worse than it would have been had he made even a moderate effort to keep focus on what was happening there.

              Be that as it may - this thread is about Trumps attempt TODAY to redefine what happened in Puerto Rico. His attempt to rewrite history, perhaps because he knows it is really hard to give himself an "A+" if that many people died under his watch.


              Jim
              Last edited by oxmixmudd; 09-13-2018, 04:55 PM.
              My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

              If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

              This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Bill the Cat
                How do we know they wouldn't have died without the hurricane? Without individually counting each and every death certificate and categorizing the cause of death, which they didn't do, they have no idea if it can be attributed to the hurricane. They are counting the increase in number of deaths from diabetic reasons in the totals! That's ridiculous!
                Presumably if there’s a spike in mortality from any cause during or soon after a natural disaster, then there’s reason to suspect that the disaster was at least the proximate cause.

                In the specific cases of mortality from diseases managed by effective medical care, like diabetes, then the disruption of that care by the hurricane represents a significant portion of causation.
                Last edited by guacamole; 09-13-2018, 05:24 PM.
                "Down in the lowlands, where the water is deep,
                Hear my cry, hear my shout,
                Save me, save me"

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Post
                  They are counting the increase in number of deaths from diabetic reasons in the totals! That's ridiculous!
                  The earlier Harvard study that did a survey of people in PR to ask if any relative had died as a result of the hurricane and to determine the reasons for those deaths, found that a third of people who said they had lost relatives attributed the cause of death to "inability to access medical care".

                  So, yes, to include people who died from medically treatable ailments like diabetes in their death-estimate seems very reasonable. Diabetes is a treatable condition which requires a lot of medical assistance but if that medical assistance is there then the death rate from it is quite low. If large numbers of people in PR were unable to access medical care as a result of the hurricane, and died of their diabetes as a result, then that is indeed a death that is a result from the hurricane. Specifically it is a death resulting from the Trump administration's failure to restore access to medical care in a timely manner. Not only is it not "ridiculous" to count these people, these are exactly the kind of people who should be counted in the death toll.
                  "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                  "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                  "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    More winning from Trump! What does it matter? They're only brown folk. /s
                    "Obama is not a brown-skinned, anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You are thinking of Jesus." Episcopal Bishop of Arizona

                    I remember WinAce. Gone but not forgotten.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by kiwimac View Post
                      More winning from Trump! What does it matter? They're only brown folk. /s
                      Not only that, but they don't get to vote in federal elections.* So they didn't vote for Trump, so he cares even less about them.




                      * Well, now a lot of them have moved to Florida they do, as the Republicans are finding out the hard way.
                      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by seer View Post
                        How do they know that 3,000 died? Did they count bodies?
                        Yes.
                        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                        go with the flow the river knows . . .

                        Frank

                        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          So what exactly is Trump claiming is supposed to be the "real" figure? Even if the 3000 is an inflation, he doesn't indicate what he thinks the actual number is--unless he's actually claiming that only "6 to 18" people died.

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                            They didn't maintain the roads to begin with. They were basically dirt trails through the jungle which got washed out. Their electrical grid was held together with duct tape and prayers.
                            Who is responsible for ensuring that state and regional governments maintain infrastructure?
                            Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                            MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                            MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                            seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

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                            • #44
                              Originally posted by Ignorant Roy View Post
                              Who is responsible for ensuring that state and regional governments maintain infrastructure?
                              That would be the responsibility of... the state and regional governments.
                              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                              Than a fool in the eyes of God


                              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                                The cause of death on the certificate will not say "hurricane".

                                Let's say an elderly person in somewhat poor health, after the hurricane lived without power for several months and drank water of dubious quality, and their health deteriorated during this time and they finally died of an infection. Their cause of death will be listed as something along the lines of infection / old age / natural causes. Did that person die as a result of the hurricane? Was it specifically the poor water quality that caused the infection? Did their health deteriorate due to the lack of power? Or was it that they were just old and were deteriorating anyway and caught a bug and died? For any given person it is often impossible to make that determination. Even with talking to their family and their doctors you often wouldn't be able to figure out whether they would have died without the hurricane. That method would be literally guessing in each case.
                                That is why I said that they should follow up on the deaths they suspect were due to the hurricane. Otherwise it is just a guesstimate.

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