OK, for those of you who haven't had enough of Rev ranting about journalism, let's turn the page to this story, which is...fishy.https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1001463917145620481 …
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Several things jumped out at me in this paragraph. First, if 14.3/1k is a 62% increase, then the expected is baseline is 8.8/1k for that period. That corresponds to about 32 deaths per thousand per year. That implies life expectancy in PR is about 31 years. 2/pic.twitter.com/AVAIC4tgA6
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Ah, this says the *yearly* mortality rate is 8.6/1000. https://www.indexmundi.com/puerto_rico/death_rate.html … If the population were steady-state that would imply an expected lifespan at birth of 116 years, but...eh, close enough to the reported value of 80ish https://www.indexmundi.com/puerto_rico/life_expectancy_at_birth.html … 3/
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But that's quibbling. Here's the real problem. -- They surveyed about 3,300 households. Let's generously call that 10,000 people. -- The baseline mortality rate is 8.6. That would be 86 deaths in this group. -- They claim elevated mortality of 62%. 53 excess deaths... 4/
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...Except, the excess mortality is only happening over the period from September 20 to Dec. 31, which is about 103 days. So the survey must have found about 53 x 103 / 365 = 15 extra deaths (and 39 total deaths by the same math). 5/
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It would be easy (easier than it is for me, at least) for WaPo to present this reasoning -- or at least link to the fucking paper -- but then they'd have to mention the error bars. And the error bars are going to be pretty big. 6/
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I've lost track of my point and I'm tired and today was generally infuriating, so I'm going to stop, except to note that as usual, WaPo used some rickety numbers to push a particular emotional narrative, because that's what they do. The end. 7/7
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Ah, NPR is slightly more honest. They lead with "near 5,000", but it turns out the 95% confidence interval is [800, 8500]! https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/29/615120123/study-puts-puerto-rico-death-toll-at-5-000-from-hurricane-maria-in-2017 …
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Also: "The research team randomly selected 3,299 households in Puerto Rico. Local scientists surveyed them over the course of three weeks in January. People in those homes reported a total of 38 deaths." Rev was right again!
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.