Mr. Steven Kopits takes issue with the Harvard School of Public Health led study’s point estimate of (4645) and confidence interval (798, 8498) for Puerto Rico excess fatalities post-Maria thusly:

Does Harvard stand behind the study, or not?

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Since the Puerto Rican government ceased publishing mortality data in February, there has been a debate over the death toll arising from Hurrican Maria. The official death toll, focusing on direct deaths, remains at 64. However, starting in November, a number of scholars attempted to gain further insight into the extent of the human disaster in the Commonwealth. One commentator has labeled another study “garbage”. What is the import of these competing analyses?

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It’s elevated. Hard to say exactly why. Hard to say why it isn’t higher.

Figure 1: US Economic Policy Uncertainty index (blue) and centered 7-day moving average (bold red). Source: policyuncertainty.com accessed 4 June 2018, and author’s calculations.

• Population mean
• Sample mean
• Population standard deviation
• Sample standard deviation
• Standard error
• Administrative data
• Survey data
• Point estimate
• Confidence interval
• Sampling bias
• Reporting bias

Now, let’s begin. Here is a graph of estimates of cumulative fatalities in Puerto Rico over time.

Figure 1: Estimates from Santos-Lozada and Jeffrey Howard (Nov. 2017) for September and October (calculated as difference of midpoint estimates), and Nashant Kishore et al. (May 2018) for December 2017 (blue triangles), and Roberto Rivera and Wolfgang Rolke (Feb. 2018) (red square), and calculated excess deaths using average deaths for 2015 and 2016 compared to 2017 and 2018 using administrative data released 6/1 (black square), and Santos-Lozada estimate based on administrative data released 6/1 (large dark blue triangle), end-of-month figures, all on log scale. + indicate upper and lower bounds for 95% confidence intervals. Orange + denotes Steven Kopits 5/31 estimate for range of excess deaths through September 2018. Cumulative figure for Santos-Lozada and Howard October figure author’s calculations based on reported monthly figures. [Figure revised 6/3]
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The Puerto Rico Department of Health has released official data, up to May (May data can be updated, so is as of 6/1).

Figure 1: Official death statistics, by month, from Puerto Rico Department of Health. Source.

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Given some criticisms of the Harvard School of Public Health led study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, I thought it useful to compare point estimates and 95% confidence intervals of several extant studies, placed in a time context.

Figure 1: Estimates from Santos-Lozada and Jeffrey Howard (Nov. 2017) for September and October, and Nashant Kishore et al. (May 2018) for December 2017 (blue triangles), and Roberto Rivera and Wolfgang Rolke (Feb. 2018) (red square), end-of-month figures, all on log scale. + indicate upper and lower bounds for 95% confidence intervals. Cumulative figure for October author’s calculations based on reported monthly figures.

The growth rate of cumulative excess fatalities is in the range of 70% per month.

Steven Kopits has characterized the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine as “garbage”, noting that it uses survey data. He has instead relied on Demographic Registry Data in his assessment. He places cumulative excess deaths at 200-400. Interestingly, Rivera and Rolke (2018) also used Demographic Registry Data and concluded that 822 excess deaths occurred from September 20 through October 31 alone, with 95% CI (605, 1039). Extrapolating linearly through end-December (time span conforming to the NEJM article) would imply 2603 excess deaths, well within the 95% confidence interval of 793-8498.

It should be also remarked upon that the Santos-Lozada and Howard study uses actual statistics for baseline from Puerto Rico Vital Statistics System, and cited numbers processed through Puerto Rico Department of Health for September (extrapolated for October). Hence, this estimate is also not survey based.

Hence, we have two sets of non-survey based estimates that as of October exceed Mr. Kopits’ upper bound of 400.

Tonight:

In Nashville tonight, @realDonaldTrump insists not only is Mexico going to pay for the wall… "they’re going to enjoy it"

— Cecilia Vega (@CeciliaVega) May 30, 2018

Nearly century and a half ago, political cartoonist Tomas Nast presents a “harsh commentary on the hypocrisy of these new Americans and their willingness to oppress others who are in the same circumstances in which they found themselves 30 years earlier. The once oppressed have now become the oppressors.”:

“Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose,” by Thomas Nast, 23 July 1870. Source

For more, see this.

From New England Journal of Medicine, results of a study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center:

Figure 4. Estimates of Excess Deaths and Reported Causes of Death.
Panel A shows a comparison of estimates of excess deaths from official reports, press (New York Times)8 and academic (Santos–Lozada and Howard)9 reports, and from our survey. Panel B shows deaths according to the month of death and the age at death as reported in our survey, categorized according to the cause of death reported by the household member. Two persons who died of similar causes at the same age are represented by dots that are superimposed in December; thus, the 37 points shown represent 38 deaths after the hurricane.
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Reader Bruce Hall, commenting on the focus on mass shootings and semi-automatic weapon use, remarks:

The focus on the AR-15 is illogical.

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Figure 1: Cumulative mass shooting fatalities from incidents where semi-automatic rifles used (blue), non-fatal injured (light blue), fatalities where other weapons (handguns, semi-automatic handguns, rifles, shotguns) used (red), non-fatal injured (pink), through April 2018. Light green denotes assault weapons ban. Orange denotes 2017M01-2018M04. Source: Mother Jones, accessed 5/18/2018, and author’s calculations.

The above graph does not incorporate the estimated 10 deaths and additional injuries incurred today in Santa Fe, TX.