Media Spread Fake Hurricane Maria Death Toll, Blame Trump, Ignore Facts

PENNY STARR
Breitbart
Jun. 07, 2018

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Eight months after Hurricane Maria made landfall on the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the effort to restore the island continues. The federal government has obligated $2.2 billion in federal aid, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and countless other contracted boots are still on the ground. These efforts to aid Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria have happened on President Donald Trump's watch.

But if you read the headlines, watch the videos, and listen to the soundbites from the anti-Trump, left-wing media, you might not know what is really going on in the U.S. territory.

In fact, the media is spreading fake news about a Harvard study that even the liberal Washington Post warns to be "very, very careful" about accepting its claim that 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico:

There's a problem: This is not a verified number, unlike body counts in wars. The Harvard study offers only an estimate -- a midpoint along a broad range of possibilities. It is not based on death records, only estimates of deaths from people who were interviewed in a survey.

In effect, the researchers took one number -- 15 deaths identified from a survey of 3,299 households -- and extrapolated that to come up with 4,645 deaths across the island. That number came with a very large caveat, clearly identified in the report, but few news media accounts bothered to explain the nuances.

"Their sampling appears to be well done, but relatively small for their purpose, leading to a large margin of error," said Roberto Rivera, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico-MayagÃ¼ez who co-wrote the study that calculated a range of 605 to 1,039 deaths, the Post reported. "Most reports on the new study have focused on the number 4,645."

"But the authors of the paper included a margin-of-error-based confidence interval: 800 to 8,500," Rivera said. "This interval is the most important part of their results."

"First, it is evidence that the death toll is much greater than 64. Secondly, it shows that the margin of error is very large," Rivera said.

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