We Might Never Know Puerto Rico Maria Death Toll, But U.S. Surely Dropped Ball On Response

Harvard researchers say the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria
last year was many times more than the "official" count. I guess
Donald Trump throwing paper towels into a Puerto Rican
crowd was inadequate hurricane relief. 

People are rightly appalled by the figures provided by Harvard University researchers who put the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year at 4,645.

That's far above the "official" death toll of 64 attributed to the Category 4 hurricane on the island.

The Harvard researchers' findings is an estimate and could well be off. Still, it's horrifying.

It's based on a survey of 3,299 Puerto Rican households, which indicates 31 percent of respondents reported disruptions in medical services and 14 percent said they were unable to get their medications, according to the Associated Press. 

From there the researchers extrapolated the number of deaths caused by the lack of medical care post-Maria.

And that's the big takeaway from this research as far as I'm concerned. However many people died from the hurricane in Puerto Rico, the overwhelming majority of the casualities were not caused directly by storm surges, or flooding or high winds.

Most of the deaths were caused by a weak response to Maria. Yes, surely, some people would have died of medical complications in the immediate aftermath of such an extensive disaster. But the fact that the power was out for months in many areas, and that resources weren't applied adequately to the island is a national shame.

Remember, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. I remain convinced that because most Puerto Ricans aren't white, and most are Hispanic, the response wasn't as robust as it could have been, due to, yes, racism.

Let's face it, the response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida last year was way more effective and timely than the Maria response in Puerto Rico. 

I do agree with Vox and other commentaries that the poor response to Maria was a mix of the Trump's administration's racism and its incompetence. As Vox says:

"Suspicion will, of course, linger for years that there's a connection between Trump's habit of weaponizing anti-Latino hysteria as the centerpiece of his politics and the unfolding of an essentially unprecedented human tragedy in a Spanish-speaking U.S. territory. 

The possibility that Trump and his team simply have no idea what they're doing should not, however, be dismissed out of hand. The fat of the matter is this is the only real crisis we've had occasion to see Trump try to wrestle with, and it's been a total fiasco - with a high human cost."

The Trump administration did not adequately gear up ahead of the storm when they knew it was coming. The relief effort was paltry and rife with incompetence or worse. Trump blamed Puerto Ricans for not recovering from Maria by themselves. He seemed to think throwing a few rolls of "beautiful soft" paper towels at people in Puerto Rico after Maria would make all the difference.

More people are researching to determine more precisely how many people died in Puerto Rico due to Maria and the U.S. government's paltry response.

George Washington University is also conducting an independent review to determine the number of Maria-related deaths in Puerto Rico. The results of that study were due out in May, says the AP, but the research team asked for and received more time to complete the study.

I hope more research does shed more light on this travesty, and if people in the Trump administration didn't do enough, let's hold them to account.