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One reason that the controversy is difficult to untangle is that there is no timeline that places the events in a coherent order. Furthermore, the various studies and estimates were all based on different datasets, released and/or collected at different times. I am not a heavy wikipedia editor, so I prefer to propose this here rather than implementing a timeline and having it reverted/rejected. Thoughts from others who follow this page?
OtianNgocnion ( talk) 15:35, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
References
I'm having a hard time following this article. The GWU study cites somewhere around 3000 deaths during a nearly 6 month period. Trump's comment was "3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico." This would actually appear to be true, since the hurricanes did not last nearly 6 months. I think we need to separate into the deaths that occurred during the actual storms, and the deaths that occurred in the aftermath and follow up periods. As it stands right now it is very difficult to understand the facts. Mr Ernie ( talk) 19:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
The first sentence of this article states that this is "the island's most severe natural disaster in modern history." While I agree with this, and I am confident (though I have not confirmed so) that this is backed up in the rest of the article, it is a somewhat controversial statement and deserves an inline citation. I would add
citation needed
to it, but I am not about to dispute that sentence, since that is what I understand to be the case and I do not wish to accidentally mislead readers by implying that the statement is controversial. I do think though that an inline citation on that sentence would give readers much more confidence as to what the reality of the situation is. Thanks for listening to my feedback.
2601:140:6:8047:89C4:F77D:3D92:515E (
talk)
04:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
The table of deaths cites a 2010 study... I am going to asterisk the Maria line as that insert is not part of the cite. Please discuss whether to do a further footnote in tablet, to remove the line from table to text, or what. And if anyone can clarify why it says 2982 instead of 2975 .... Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 02:29, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Although This was a real controversy with real events, I still feal that there is a bias in this article. Such as parts like "Trump made these accusations with out evidence."
A tag should at the least be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.142.60.10 ( talk) 20:51, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Under the George Washington University study section, there is a statement "An error in the displacement data used by the GWU team led to an overestimate of Hurricane Maria death toll by about 300[54]". The citation associated with this edit does not show that a an error led to an overestimation of Hurricane Maria death toll. This statement should be removed or the reference needs to be improved to support the statement.
Additionally, the reference is to "Supplement to: Santos-Burgoa C, Sandberg J, Suárez E, et al. Differential and persistent risk of excess mortality from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico: a time-series analysis". Lancet. October 10, 2019. [emphasis added]. I am writing this in August of 2019. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.217.159.40 ( talk) 11:31, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
This article is in the category "conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump". The hurricane Maria death toll tweets are a Trump controversy but not even close to being a conspiracy theory by usual definitions. 73.149.246.232 ( talk) 12:10, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Trump also said, correctly, that people dying of old age (i.e., chronic conditions such as emphysema and diabetes listed in this artice) He talked, possibly correctly, of REPORTS (that is, media accounts) of the death estimates, not the estimations themselves being used to make him look bad. He did not say the study itself was done to make him look but, but he did tweet that "GWU research" was "hired" (from context I guess he meant by the Puerto Rico government) to do the estimate. I don't have any evidence for or against that, but the study authors mostly have Spanish surnames and the articles you cite state that GWU did the study in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico. This was at a time the PR government was under fire for underplaying the death toll, and wanted as much money as possible for hurricane recovery efforts. Ultimately they simply took the GWU "excess deaths" concept as their (re)definition of the number of deaths; instead of getting a more accurate death count by including missing later found, surveying funeral homes, etc they just took a new concept and decided to call it the "official death toll".
As Trump said, correctly, this newfangled death-counting method was never the official count for prior hurricances. Obviously we could also get 1-2 orders of magnitude higher for Katrina and most other storm using the same method.
Trump's statements are not super-careful or full of citations, but this is not the stuff of conspiracy theory, and he is right about the death tolls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.149.246.232 ( talk) 17:44, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
73.149.246.232 ( talk) 03:30, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
73.149.246.232 ( talk) 05:44, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
"It is a conspiracy theory created by Trump"The question is whether it actually meets the definition of a conspiracy theory or is just another political controversy. That you prefer to repetitively label it a conspiracy theory does not make it one.
to make people disbelieve that many people died in P.R. as a result of his inefficient handling of the event-- Trump's reasons for making his statements are unknown and are completely irrelevant to determining whether the statements were "conspiracy theory".
References
There is a large infobox on a proposed US Senate bill to study methods for counting disaster deaths, but the bill died in committee and shows no sign of being revived. Remove? 73.149.246.232 ( talk) 16:52, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
There is a new study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) published in June 2019 - "Causes of Excess Deaths in Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria: A Time-Series Estimation"
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305015
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Hurricane Maria death toll controversy article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
A news item involving Hurricane Maria death toll controversy was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 29 August 2018. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
One reason that the controversy is difficult to untangle is that there is no timeline that places the events in a coherent order. Furthermore, the various studies and estimates were all based on different datasets, released and/or collected at different times. I am not a heavy wikipedia editor, so I prefer to propose this here rather than implementing a timeline and having it reverted/rejected. Thoughts from others who follow this page?
OtianNgocnion ( talk) 15:35, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
References
I'm having a hard time following this article. The GWU study cites somewhere around 3000 deaths during a nearly 6 month period. Trump's comment was "3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico." This would actually appear to be true, since the hurricanes did not last nearly 6 months. I think we need to separate into the deaths that occurred during the actual storms, and the deaths that occurred in the aftermath and follow up periods. As it stands right now it is very difficult to understand the facts. Mr Ernie ( talk) 19:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
The first sentence of this article states that this is "the island's most severe natural disaster in modern history." While I agree with this, and I am confident (though I have not confirmed so) that this is backed up in the rest of the article, it is a somewhat controversial statement and deserves an inline citation. I would add
citation needed
to it, but I am not about to dispute that sentence, since that is what I understand to be the case and I do not wish to accidentally mislead readers by implying that the statement is controversial. I do think though that an inline citation on that sentence would give readers much more confidence as to what the reality of the situation is. Thanks for listening to my feedback.
2601:140:6:8047:89C4:F77D:3D92:515E (
talk)
04:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
The table of deaths cites a 2010 study... I am going to asterisk the Maria line as that insert is not part of the cite. Please discuss whether to do a further footnote in tablet, to remove the line from table to text, or what. And if anyone can clarify why it says 2982 instead of 2975 .... Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 02:29, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
Although This was a real controversy with real events, I still feal that there is a bias in this article. Such as parts like "Trump made these accusations with out evidence."
A tag should at the least be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.142.60.10 ( talk) 20:51, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Under the George Washington University study section, there is a statement "An error in the displacement data used by the GWU team led to an overestimate of Hurricane Maria death toll by about 300[54]". The citation associated with this edit does not show that a an error led to an overestimation of Hurricane Maria death toll. This statement should be removed or the reference needs to be improved to support the statement.
Additionally, the reference is to "Supplement to: Santos-Burgoa C, Sandberg J, Suárez E, et al. Differential and persistent risk of excess mortality from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico: a time-series analysis". Lancet. October 10, 2019. [emphasis added]. I am writing this in August of 2019. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.217.159.40 ( talk) 11:31, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
This article is in the category "conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump". The hurricane Maria death toll tweets are a Trump controversy but not even close to being a conspiracy theory by usual definitions. 73.149.246.232 ( talk) 12:10, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Trump also said, correctly, that people dying of old age (i.e., chronic conditions such as emphysema and diabetes listed in this artice) He talked, possibly correctly, of REPORTS (that is, media accounts) of the death estimates, not the estimations themselves being used to make him look bad. He did not say the study itself was done to make him look but, but he did tweet that "GWU research" was "hired" (from context I guess he meant by the Puerto Rico government) to do the estimate. I don't have any evidence for or against that, but the study authors mostly have Spanish surnames and the articles you cite state that GWU did the study in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico. This was at a time the PR government was under fire for underplaying the death toll, and wanted as much money as possible for hurricane recovery efforts. Ultimately they simply took the GWU "excess deaths" concept as their (re)definition of the number of deaths; instead of getting a more accurate death count by including missing later found, surveying funeral homes, etc they just took a new concept and decided to call it the "official death toll".
As Trump said, correctly, this newfangled death-counting method was never the official count for prior hurricances. Obviously we could also get 1-2 orders of magnitude higher for Katrina and most other storm using the same method.
Trump's statements are not super-careful or full of citations, but this is not the stuff of conspiracy theory, and he is right about the death tolls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.149.246.232 ( talk) 17:44, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
73.149.246.232 ( talk) 03:30, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
73.149.246.232 ( talk) 05:44, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
"It is a conspiracy theory created by Trump"The question is whether it actually meets the definition of a conspiracy theory or is just another political controversy. That you prefer to repetitively label it a conspiracy theory does not make it one.
to make people disbelieve that many people died in P.R. as a result of his inefficient handling of the event-- Trump's reasons for making his statements are unknown and are completely irrelevant to determining whether the statements were "conspiracy theory".
References
There is a large infobox on a proposed US Senate bill to study methods for counting disaster deaths, but the bill died in committee and shows no sign of being revived. Remove? 73.149.246.232 ( talk) 16:52, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
There is a new study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) published in June 2019 - "Causes of Excess Deaths in Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria: A Time-Series Estimation"
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305015