Editorial: Maria’s deadly impact on Puerto Rico deserves more attention
Thanks, however, to a
The deaths were mainly from a lack of medical care in the weeks after the storm -- what happens when you have no electricity, when roads are blocked, when hospitals are closed or overcrowded.
This is a highly credible study. The researchers surveyed 3,299 randomly selected households on the island, asking whether people knew of deaths in their barrio, or neighborhood. They compared the results to official death statistics from 2016. It's a well-accepted technique, and they made their investigative methods and findings public in the esteemed
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The Trump administration has been silent about the study's findings as of this writing. That's shocking, yet in line with
But catastrophes don't get much more real than Maria.
The Harvard numbers (which are "likely conservative," the authors say) would make this the deadliest natural disaster to hit
Had this Category 5 hit the continental
For example, the military sent 73 helicopters -- critical for saving victims and delivering emergency supplies to
"We have the
Trump visited
Yes, such greedy, grasping people: On average, Puerto Ricans went 84 days without electricity, 68 days without water and 41 days without cellphone service, the Harvard survey found. Even now, eight months after Maria,
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Politicians sense their voting potential. Democratic Sen.
Granted,
It didn't. The media, obsessed with Trump's daily dramas, has kept the island's post-Maria miseries on the periphery. Unlike
This indifference has lingered for too long, and cost too many lives. It needs to end.
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