The True Toll of Hurricanes

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Apparently a recent paper has found that when you take into account excess deaths caused by the disruption of a hurricane, the true death toll is thousands of people in the U.S. each year
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/02/nx-s1-51 ... ted-number

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Link: https://youtu.be/LsToZlTBeGc

Bringing back this old thread because PBS Terra came out with a really good video explaining the results of the paper. It's even crazier than I first thought---excess indirect mortality from hurricanes might partly explain why the Southeastern U.S. has lower life expectancy

EDIT: Sorry I forgot how to post YouTube videos here again

[AnnularCane]

A lot of that area is Dixie Alley, and I'm wondering if that might be a factor too.

[storm_in_a_teacup]

I mean it's probably a lot of factors. Like there's a lot of poverty in the southeast. And a lot of food that tastes good but is really bad for you lol

The disturbing thing is that it seems for natural disasters of all kinds, we haven't reduced indirect deaths at all. Which implies we're getting good at being prepared for the disaster itself, but we're not supporting communities after the disaster

[chaser1]

Very thought provoking post and I generally agree with the premise that indirect mortality caused by hurricanes (or any severe natural disaster) is likely far greater then what any immediate death toll would suggest. I think that the video did a poor job of showing or explaining how those dots may be connected however. Famine and stress induced illness, injuries, accidents are a start but economic impact may play an even bigger role. Business and agricultural losses eventually impact employment losses, income and wages loss, loss of insurance, lowered standard of living, decreased access to medications, dietary changes, and more.

[al78]

You hear nothing of the indirect deaths in the media post-disaster, so it is not in the minds of people even if it is much worse than the direct death toll. The other thing I find a bit frustrating is that after a major natural disaster, whilst there is frequent media coverage in the following days, you almost never hear anything about how the worst affected communities are shaping up months later. Anyone would think these places recover in a couple of weeks and that's it, business as usual.

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Yeah I saw that after Harvey. I feel like, despite its great size, Houston is not mentioned in the news much compared to other major cities (at least that's what it seemed like when I was in Los Angeles, where suddenly the area I was in was in the news all the time). It got mentioned a bunch during Hurricane Harvey and then now it's back to just kinda not being talked about.

And of course the situation is going to be orders of magnitude worse for smaller communities, like the people in Beaumont who had the worst flooding...

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Very thought provoking post and I generally agree with the premise that indirect mortality caused by hurricanes (or any severe natural disaster) is likely far greater then what any immediate death toll would suggest. I think that the video did a poor job of showing or explaining how those dots may be connected however. Famine and stress induced illness, injuries, accidents are a start but economic impact may play an even bigger role. Business and agricultural losses eventually impact employment losses, income and wages loss, loss of insurance, lowered standard of living, decreased access to medications, dietary changes, and more.

They do mention economic impacts in the video, like how the cost of rebuilding ends up taking away resources that could be spent on other things.

[chaser1]

Very thought provoking post and I generally agree with the premise that indirect mortality caused by hurricanes (or any severe natural disaster) is likely far greater then what any immediate death toll would suggest. I think that the video did a poor job of showing or explaining how those dots may be connected however. Famine and stress induced illness, injuries, accidents are a start but economic impact may play an even bigger role. Business and agricultural losses eventually impact employment losses, income and wages loss, loss of insurance, lowered standard of living, decreased access to medications, dietary changes, and more.

They do mention economic impacts in the video, like how the cost of rebuilding ends up taking away resources that could be spent on other things.

True, they do mention that but I think the video could have better illustrated their point by perhaps documenting a few people perhaps displaced or indirectly impacted from a recent or past hurricane or flood, and directly shown how their lives changed (or were sadly impacted) over the course of the recent years to better illustrate the point the video was established to make. The video struck me as to have discovered a very real delayed impact that natural disasters have on society..... but failed to better drive home or graphically define "how". Doing so would require a longer and deeper type of montage (such as 60 Minutes, Prime-Time, etc) I guess.