1928 headline Okeechobee or San Felipe Segundo Hurricane track over PortoRico

Part 110   Disaster Aid Bill of 2019 appropriates $19 billion for Puerto Rico, and states, government  report of 3,000 deaths  up from 79 from hurricane Maria in 2017.  Politics has made death rankings a metric of economic development, with the  goal of growing government. 

[Previous Part 109. Book Review of the Deep State and sanctuary states replacing Utah.]

UTopiAH. 64 death certificates or 2,975 survey? This is Part 110 of a health series for comparing state rankings for life expectancy.  Death rates are the new metric of economic development. Included are medical conditions ranking Utah’s #1 for health. When nose counts don’t give the answer wanted, the pressure is to turn to surveys, sampling one in many hundreds, and expanding out to the desired conclusion   Where should a named memorial be built listing names from the Puerto Rico Hurricane.

Belize Hurricane Gilbert Stamp $2

         CNBC  ‘Trump signs $19 billion disaster relief bill and says Puerto Rico ‘should love’ him’ PUBLISHED THU, JUN 6 2019. 

CNBC noted that the disaster relief bill ‘will send funds to the hurricane-battered island of Puerto Rico and to states damaged by hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and earthquakes. The recipients include California, Florida, Georgia and Iowa.’  ‘Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017. The storm knocked out power for 1.5 million people and it took 11 months to restore it. The island’s government estimated the hurricane caused nearly 3,000 deaths.’   Congress had allocated ‘ $41 billion to Puerto Rico at the time.’

Hurricane Hattie Stanley Field Airport British Honduras

            CNBC was careful to state the island’s government estimated 3,000 deaths.  The number of Hurricane Maria deaths was covered in detail in  ‘’ Part Twenty Eight. Because Puerto Rico’s death toll from 2017’s Hurricane is a metric of economic development, newspapers pressured to up the numbers. For the readers’ convenience, these columns are samplings of that pressure.’’

Part 28 and Hurricane death metrics
Barbados hurricane season.

            Puerto Rico’s Governor was pressured by the New York Times to raise its death toll from 2017 Hurricane Maria.  As noted in Part 28, Storms, disasters, commotion bring eyes to the media,  and boost circulation or ratings. The worse the disaster the better the coverage. Hurricanes destroy by a sea surge, flying debris, and tornadoes. in September 2017 , two Hurricanes moved over Puerto Rico. Being warned, the four million plus Puerto Ricans,  sought shelter. Power was lost, homes were destroyed, and roads blocked. In the weeks afterward, physicians certified 64 storm deaths caused by the storms sea surge, drowning and being struck by wind debris. Each death certificate was completed by a coroner, with name, gender, description, date, and cause of death.  In 2015  Puerto Rico reported 28,085 death certificates.  The media was unsatisfied, hoping or expecting more deaths. Hence the media demanded and pushed for an increase in storm deaths count.  The political pressure on the government of Puerto Rico increased the count.   Storm deaths were broadened from just wind and water, to include suicides, sepsis, diabetes, heart attack and medicine. Of necessity, Puerto Rico’s coroners were declared incompetent to complete death certificates.  And the death certificates requiring a name , date and place, were substituted out of existence.  New statistical surveys were used by sampling one in six hundred households, and then multiplying the results by six hundred.   No individual names, genders or causes, could be listed,  but a new and higher count was achieved. The 2018 statistical survey listed storm deaths at 2,975, a precision not based on usual metrics.  Such accuracy  was not supported by significant numbers in the survey. The conclusion noted that deaths are a metric of economic activity, and that the increase in storm deaths was due, not to drowning or debris striking, but to failure of the health system, missing doctors, missing ambulances, missing electrical and utility grid.   The missing doctors were not due to a failure of the emergency response, but to generations of failure to train doctors,  and restrictions on medical school seats. Note no one complained about an absence of lawyers, because law schools annually graduate three times the lawyers as medical schools graduate physicians. Likewise no mention  of regrets a shortage of insurance salesmen, car dealers, handy-men, or other vocations, just health care.

             Politics also required finding a link between the two hurricanes and global man made climate.  change.   Hurricane’s are as much of Puerto Rico’s history,  as palm trees and tropical nights. 

            The Obama census office was not to rank states by life expectancy after 2009. That task was given to the CDC, and the result was Utah collapse from First in the nation with life expectancy to 13th.  The politics of climate change require accuracy to be lost. Climate change relies on  estimates and surveys.

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