General / Off-Topic Wow, Puerto Rico blames their Doctors

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Ok, so I'm a doctor.
Not a fancy kind, just a Doctor-Doctor.

A few islands up the chain, is Puerto Rico, which got hit by Maria the powerful hurricane last year. At that time, the toll was given at 64, which was rather moderate. But now, there's been a heckuva recount.

The new toll is a staggering 2975 people.

How the heck could they get that wrong?
Well, it seems that their doctors wrote down what mechanically killed the people, like " blunt impact to the neck, causing a spinal fracture" instead of writing down " Hurricane".

Unbelievably, the doctors are getting blamed for the miscount. Because if you are counting, and you see the first one(edit: first example above, that doesn't say "Hurricane") ON THE FRIKKIN DAY OF THE HURRICANE, you are too dumb to figure out why. It might have been a boxing match gone wrong, on Hurricane Day I guess? 3000 of them, in fact.

Jeeze.

 

[Rade Konn]

Even though PR is a US territory the island is apparently treated like a third world country. The island was already bad enough (Especially health care) before Maria hit and the US decided to stick the middle finger as a relief effort to a island with poor health care.

 

[Morbad]

Even though PR is a US territory the island is apparently treated like a third world country. The island was already bad enough (Especially health care) before Maria hit and the US decided to stick the middle finger as a relief effort to a island with poor health care.

The United States has more of it's citizens living in third world conditions than many third world countries and unincorporated territories may as well be foreign nations as far as mainstream American society is concerned.

 

[lysan]

Ok, so I'm a doctor.
Not a fancy kind, just a Doctor-Doctor.

A few islands up the chain, is Puerto Rico, which got hit by Maria the powerful hurricane last year. At that time, the toll was given at 64, which was rather moderate. But now, there's been a heckuva recount.

The new toll is a staggering 2975 people.

How the heck could they get that wrong?
Well, it seems that their doctors wrote down what mechanically killed the people, like " blunt impact to the neck, causing a spinal fracture" instead of writing down " Hurricane".

Unbelievably, the doctors are getting blamed for the miscount. Because if you are counting, and you see the first one(edit: first example above, that doesn't say "Hurricane") ON THE FRIKKIN DAY OF THE HURRICANE, you are too dumb to figure out why. It might have been a boxing match gone wrong, on Hurricane Day I guess? 3000 of them, in fact.

Jeeze.

next time, take your time.

The deceased was hit by a blunt object, material from the Arecaceae tree, they are a botanical family of perennial trees, hurricane delivered strait into the torso of JD.

Anyway, that is why we need to build houses underground and not above the ground.

 

[SMcA]

Unbelievably, the doctors are getting blamed for the miscount. Because if you are counting, and you see the first one(edit: first example above, that doesn't say "Hurricane") ON THE FRIKKIN DAY OF THE HURRICANE, you are too dumb to figure out why. It might have been a boxing match gone wrong, on Hurricane Day I guess? 3000 of them, in fact.

Jeeze.

Politician speak for:
It wasn’t me. A big boy did it and ran away.

 

[Para Handy]

Ok, so I'm a doctor.
Not a fancy kind, just a Doctor-Doctor.

A few islands up the chain, is Puerto Rico, which got hit by Maria the powerful hurricane last year. At that time, the toll was given at 64, which was rather moderate. But now, there's been a heckuva recount.

The new toll is a staggering 2975 people.

How the heck could they get that wrong?
Well, it seems that their doctors wrote down what mechanically killed the people, like " blunt impact to the neck, causing a spinal fracture" instead of writing down " Hurricane".

Unbelievably, the doctors are getting blamed for the miscount. Because if you are counting, and you see the first one(edit: first example above, that doesn't say "Hurricane") ON THE FRIKKIN DAY OF THE HURRICANE, you are too dumb to figure out why. It might have been a boxing match gone wrong, on Hurricane Day I guess? 3000 of them, in fact.

Jeeze.

Guardian article (doesn't actually blame doctors ):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...aria-new-death-toll-estimate-is-close-to-3000

“We never anticipated a scenario of zero communication, zero energy, zero highway access,”

This is the first official change to the death toll following efforts by journalists, activists and academics to get the government to officially acknowledge the scale of devastation.

Researchers said the actual number of excess deaths was estimated to be in the range of 2,658 to 3,290. Researchers said the next stage of assessing the death toll includes examining death certificates and interviewing family and friends of the deceased to determine if those deaths should be attributed to the storm.

Basically the governor comes out as an incompetent idiot and the head of state (that guy we can't mention by name or the forum gets nuked) just moaned about relief cost and chucked out some rolls of paper towels.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

From CNN:

Interviewers there asked them about the circumstances of the deaths, they said. Those circumstances appear to meet criteria established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for disaster-related deaths. Guidelines published by the CDC in October 2017 say injuries suffered during cleanup after a disaster, "blunt-force trauma" related to a disaster and "acute exacerbation of chronic condition(s)" following a disaster, among other direct and indirect causes of death, should be classified as disaster-related.

It's human nature to seek to solve a conflict or a disaster by identifying and attacking a personified agent of any adversity, this we've all seen as the scapegoating done so many times.

Sometimes the scapegoat is an individual, but usually it's a group. The scapegoats are practically never to blame, it's just easier than actually understanding the problem.

It's not the doctors that did something wrong here to create more deaths, or to confuse the issue. And no politicians actually caused the hurricane either, or sought to make it worse. It's just our own innate incompetence that yields imperfect results.

We need to overcome our own antipathies, and look to a rational idea to get anywhere. Like subterranean building. Now that's going to offer better results against winds. Maybe not for floods though.

 

[Para Handy]

From CNN:



It's human nature to seek to solve a conflict or a disaster by identifying and attacking a personified agent of any adversity, this we've all seen as the scapegoating done so many times.

Sometimes the scapegoat is an individual, but usually it's a group. The scapegoats are practically never to blame, it's just easier than actually understanding the problem.

It's not the doctors that did something wrong here to create more deaths, or to confuse the issue. And no politicians actually caused the hurricane either, or sought to make it worse. It's just our own innate incompetence that yields imperfect results.

We need to overcome our own antipathies, and look to a rational idea to get anywhere. Like subterranean building. Now that's going to offer better results against winds. Maybe not for floods though.

I think someone has got the wrong end of the stick somewhere. Doctors don't make entries on death certificates saying "smoked 40 s a day for 50 years" or "internal combustion engines enable vehicles to travel with lethal momentum" or "sharks evolved to eat things".

The doctor lists the cause of actual death, not the cause of the cause.

 

[Ian Skippy]

[video=youtube;115-D-sms6M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=115-D-sms6M[/video]

 

[lysan]

borrrrring.... no let's have some real music!

[video=youtube;HASYL4JWwBU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HASYL4JWwBU[/video]

 

[ick]

Wow, the amount of uninformed facts and opinions in this forum post about Puerto Rico is staggering.

PR is treated like a third world country?
The island before Maria had "poor health care"?

Nothing cogent is going to come out of the foolishness here.

I would suggest a lock.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Wow, the amount of uninformed facts and opinions in this forum post about Puerto Rico is staggering.

PR is treated like a third world country?
The island before Maria had "poor health care"?

Nothing cogent is going to come out of the foolishness here.

I would suggest a lock.

You could just correct the errors? That's the whole point of the OP.

 

[lysan]

Wow, the amount of uninformed facts and opinions in this forum post about Puerto Rico is staggering.

PR is treated like a third world country?
The island before Maria had "poor health care"?

Nothing cogent is going to come out of the foolishness here.

I would suggest a lock.

PR is broke, and want to be a part of the US but that's not going to happen, and now it's political and the tread will be locked.

 

[starman]

Ok, so I'm a doctor.
Not a fancy kind, just a Doctor-Doctor.

A few islands up the chain, is Puerto Rico, which got hit by Maria the powerful hurricane last year. At that time, the toll was given at 64, which was rather moderate. But now, there's been a heckuva recount.

The new toll is a staggering 2975 people.

How the heck could they get that wrong?
Well, it seems that their doctors wrote down what mechanically killed the people, like " blunt impact to the neck, causing a spinal fracture" instead of writing down " Hurricane".

Unbelievably, the doctors are getting blamed for the miscount. Because if you are counting, and you see the first one(edit: first example above, that doesn't say "Hurricane") ON THE FRIKKIN DAY OF THE HURRICANE, you are too dumb to figure out why. It might have been a boxing match gone wrong, on Hurricane Day I guess? 3000 of them, in fact.

Jeeze.

My GP has diagnosed me with repetitive strain injury after I described what grinding involved.

 

[Rade Konn]

Wow, the amount of uninformed facts and opinions in this forum post about Puerto Rico is staggering.

PR is treated like a third world country?
The island before Maria had "poor health care"?

Nothing cogent is going to come out of the foolishness here.

I would suggest a lock.

Did you not watch the first video in this thread which overly reinforced what I posted? Also I am Puerto Rican with relatives still on the island so i'd think twice about posting something so ignorant on this topic if I were you.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Here's a story that outlines the complexity of counting.

A guy gets an aortic aneurysm same day that power and water go out at the hospital. He's basically screwed.

What's the "cause" ? On the death cert., it's going to say "aneurysm".
But last week, that would have been fixable. ( or maybe not- he's 95 in the story. Seriously, fixing an aortic aneurysm in a man 95 years old??!! I'm not going to do that. He'll pop off on the table, and then we all know who's to blame.)

Getting this kind of count is an indictment of the authorities if it takes too long to restore service, but blaming hurricanes on people is a bad idea. One of my religious cousins blames hurricanes on Gay Sex.
Everytime it rains I point at the sky, look at him and nod knowingly, cause we all know somewhere somebody is having slightly gay sex!! [yesnod]

 

[Morbad]

PR is treated like a third world country?
The island before Maria had "poor health care"?

I have family and friends still in PR and survey says, yes and yes.

Then again, that probably goes for poorer people anywhere, it's just that PR is poor relative to most of the rest of the US (which itself has a large portion of poor for such a wealthy nation).

Here's a story that outlines the complexity of counting.

A guy gets an aortic aneurysm same day that power and water go out at the hospital. He's basically screwed.

What's the "cause" ? On the death cert., it's going to say "aneurysm".
But last week, that would have been fixable. ( or maybe not- he's 95 in the story. Seriously, fixing an aortic aneurysm in a man 95 years old??!! I'm not going to do that. He'll pop off on the table, and then we all know who's to blame.)

Getting this kind of count is an indictment of the authorities if it takes too long to restore service, but blaming hurricanes on people is a bad idea. One of my religious cousins blames hurricanes on Gay Sex.
Everytime it rains I point at the sky, look at him and nod knowingly, cause we all know somewhere somebody is having slightly gay sex!! [yesnod]

While I agree that there are complexities in counting and that it's folly to blame the weather on people, barring those kind of idiot darwin award winners that rush on to beaches to watch storm surge come, if a hurricane kills someone, directly or indirectly, in an ostensibly developed nation, it's because preparations and/or responses were lacking.

Situations like Katrina or Maria weren't natural disasters. They featured largely natural phenomena (the degree to which humanity has altered the climate not withstanding), but it's on people for placing each other in harm's way with insufficient protection and doing too little, too late, in response. It was a foregone conclusion that a large storm would hit New Orleans at some point and that when it did, the last century of mismanagement would get a lot of people killed and ruin many more. The situation with Maria in Puerto Rico was strikingly similar, but was further exacerbated by no one in power really giving a damn.