President Neelix denies thousands of deaths in Puerto Rico

[unknownsample]

I don't have much energy to fight. But I shall toss out a ball and see how hard it gets hit.

Could the President merely have been misinformed? As noted he initially got a very small number that seemed to bloom from media accounts. And we know the media likes sensation over accuracy.
I have little news on the actual work in Puerto Rico, how did it fair against the FEMA work post Katrina?
Not feeling you did enough and try harder has its place. But do you tell a soldier that just held a dying child that he should have done more?
I feel like these are points to consider. But might not stick on this President's board.

No

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45511865

US President Donald Trump is disputing official findings that nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico as a result of last year's storms.


"3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico," Mr Trump wrote on Twitter, without offering evidence for the claim.

He accused Democrats of inflating the official death toll to "make me look as bad as possible".

The official figure was released last month after an independent study.

On Thursday, Mr Trump tweeted that Democrats were attacking him "when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico"

Is he debating semantics on Direct and Indirect deaths?

No he's lying as usual.

[Nealithi]

I don't have much energy to fight. But I shall toss out a ball and see how hard it gets hit.

Could the President merely have been misinformed? As noted he initially got a very small number that seemed to bloom from media accounts. And we know the media likes sensation over accuracy.
I have little news on the actual work in Puerto Rico, how did it fair against the FEMA work post Katrina?
Not feeling you did enough and try harder has its place. But do you tell a soldier that just held a dying child that he should have done more?
I feel like these are points to consider. But might not stick on this President's board.

No

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45511865

US President Donald Trump is disputing official findings that nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico as a result of last year's storms.

"3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico," Mr Trump wrote on Twitter, without offering evidence for the claim.

He accused Democrats of inflating the official death toll to "make me look as bad as possible".

The official figure was released last month after an independent study.

On Thursday, Mr Trump tweeted that Democrats were attacking him "when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico"

I noted the BBC report you linked, thank you. But did you follow the link and read what the Acertainment of the Estimated Excess Mortality report is saying?

I ask because I think it is saying the death toll is based on estimating how many people should have been in Puerto Rico, then look at a model showing exodus and subtracting that from census estimates. Then rolling out a figure based on what was different. That sounds like guess work to me. But it rates many of the deaths to diabetes and sepsis. Recorded up to six months later. What is going on in the rebuilding? The only way I can see both of those being major with a cause back to the hurricane would be power loss not allowing refrigeration of medicines. But I am guessing on that. I am still reading the report.

[Nealithi]

Just putting the link here.

https://publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/defa ... 20Rico.pdf

[FemtoCat]

Maybe because in the aftermath of a hurricane things aren't exactly OK, and they certainly weren't OK in the aftermath of Irma especially in Puerto Rico.

That, almost certainly, is correct. Doesn't change the fact that these statements:

President Neelix denies thousands of deaths in Puerto Rico

Trump falsely claims nearly 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico 'did not die'

are false. Unless, of course, saying "X died in a car accident" can actually mean that 3 months later he commited suicide, unable to cope with death of his beloved wife, who died in that car at the time of the accident.

[Worffan101]

To me it seems that your president is correct

3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico.

And ~3000 people figure comes from the study that estimates the amount of people who have died in the aftermath of these hurricanes, long after they have passsed.
Or is it me not understanding finer points of english language?

Well, there's two problems with that.

One, Donald Trump's command of the English language is so poor that he almost certainly DID mean "in the aftermath" as well as "during the hurricanes themselves", especially given the context in which he made the comment.

Two, the damage was bad enough that a major goal of the relief operations (if you can call them that) was to save lives, so yeah, it is on Trump that people died as a consequence of the storm even after the storm, and he's clearly trying to deny that those people died, which is frankly ridiculous.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

"I think the best job we did was Puerto Rico"-President Neelix

That's the thing. It's not bad intel, it's not quibbling, it's an all-out war on truth itself.

[FemtoCat]

Donald Trump's command of the English language is so poor that he almost certainly DID mean "in the aftermath" as well as "during the hurricanes themselves"

That would imply that the statement he made does indeed mean what i thought it meant, which means that according to you 72 year old man who was born in US and had college education has worse understanding of english language than a less-than-30 y.o. guy without any degrees, who never visited any english-speaking country, or, for than matter, any foreign country.
As grateful as i am for this implicit compliment, this seems to be very unlikely

Especially given the context in which he made the comment.

If i am not mistaken, the context was people trying to put the blame for those ~3000 deaths on him. Pointing out that only 64 for people died during the hurricane would be the most logical thing to say, especially considering the fact that his predeccessor was never held to these rigourous standards: compare, for example, wikipedia articles about hurricane Maria to articles about hurricane Matthew. First article indicates that there were "3057 fatalities", which obviously includes very-indirect-calculated-ones, while second proudly declares that there were only "fatalities: 603 total", which, considering the fact that this report declares that

Matthew was responsible for 585 direct deaths

suggests that this figure includes only those people who died in the hurricane itself
I find it interesting, though, that the same wikipedia articles indicate that the economic damage from Maria was ~6 times more serious (91 vs 15 billion) than the damage from Matthew, yet the amount of direct deaths from Matthew is ~10 times higher. If 64 direct deaths from Maria make Trump == president Neelix, then what do ~600 direct deaths from Matthew make your previous president? President Phlox?

The damage was bad enough that a major goal of the relief operations (if you can call them that) was to save lives, so yeah, it is on Trump that people died as a consequence of the storm even after the storm

Is it?
1. If my understanding of the way american government works is correct, then both federal and local government are supposed to work on cleaning up everything in the aftermath of the disaster. In fact, logic dictates (at least to me) that coordinating restorative efforts must be primarily local governments responsibility . President, AFAIK, is responsible only for the federal part of the government, so at least some blame should be attributed to local authorities, shouldn't it?
2. AFAIK, POTUS is not a god, but a mere mortal. From that logically follows that he is not omnipotent.
That raises the question: how do you know that preventing these 3000 deaths was within his power? The only way i can think of is to find estimates of amount of people dying in the aftermath of a similair natural disaster that occured during another administriation and compare those estimates with the ones we are discussing now.
The only report that seems to follow similair methodology that i was able to find is this, and it says that

A significant (47%) increase in proportion of deaths was seen compared with the known
baseline population.

Curiosly enough, the "3000 dead people" report doesnt provide the same figure directly: there is an absolute amount of people who died (table 1) and "Estimated percentage increase in crude mortality rates by municipality in Puerto Rico from September 2017-February 2018". If we were to compare the amount of predicted and observed deaths during SEP-OCT, we would find out that the mortality has increased by ~27% which means that Trump handled the problem 1.74 times better than Bush did.
I'm no scientist, though, so it is possible that i compared apples to oranges. It would be interesting to see which conclusions will actual professionals reach. Considering progressives love for science and political usefulness of being able to say "Obama handled similair kinds of situations N times better then Trump did", i have no doubts that such an article will soon emerge.
There might be a problem with doing such a study, however: you see, i was intially planning to compare disaster handling capabilities of Denobulans and Talaxians, yet i was not able to find any suitable paper that estimates excess deaths in the aftermath of any hurricanes that occured during Phloxes reign. The only one that i was able to find was this, and it not suitable for comparison: it is partially behind the paywall, to my untrained eye it seems to be following different methodology and

We used electronic death records to describe changes in all-cause and cause-specific mortality overall, in persons aged 76 years or older

It almost looks like american academia is racist: it lets Denobulans get away with things it would lynch Talaxian for!

And he's clearly trying to deny that those people died, which is frankly ridiculous.

As i had already said, that statement is true if (and only if) he knows english language worse than i do. And that is very unlikely for the reasons i already mentioned.

[Worffan101]

Trust me, FemtoCat, he really is that bad at English.

Here's some sample quotes:

https://www.shortlist.com/news/most-rid ... ever/54443

This guy speaks like a faucet gushing verbal diarrhea. He says whatever damn fool thing pops into his head no matter how idiotic it is and goes on random neuron-fire tangents worse than I do (and I have one of the worst ADHD cases I've ever seen).

[unknownsample]

@Femto that's thinking worthy of Neelix. Meanwhile here's some actual journalism on what happened in the aftermath.

https://qz.com/1390559/how-many-people- ... stigation/

Thousands of people were killed by Hurricane Maria. But the Puerto Rican government has only publicly identified 64 victims.

An investigation by Quartz, Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism, and the Associated Press has identified 487 victims of Maria. It is the most extensive record yet of who died and why. Many families say that the real cause of death was government inaction.

[FemtoCat]

Trust me, FemtoCat, he really is that bad at English.
Here's some sample quotes:
https://www.shortlist.com/news/most-rid ... ever/54443

Those quotes are taken from his speeches. Believe me, when i am trying to speak english i sound much, MUCH worse

@Femto that's thinking worthy of Neelix

Why?