As the number of deaths due to COVID-19 continue to grow on Donald Trump’s watch, and outrage over his culpability escalates, let us not forget that he showed us who he is back in 2017 when he attempted to ignore and minimize the death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria’s devastation of the island. Remember that in 2018, Trump claimed Democrats made up death toll numbers to make him look bad. He even gave himself a “10,” for his response.
Sound familiar? His “COVID-19 is a hoax” routine is a retread of his Hurricane Maria rhetoric and lies.
Today, on September 11th, as I sit and think about the World Trade Center where I was working in 2001, and the 2,977 deaths which resulted from the terrorist attacks, I am reminded of the 2,975 deaths attributed to Maria in a George Washington University study—other studies, like one from Harvard, posted higher numbers.
Let us not forget Trump’s “pride” over his Puerto Rico response back in 2018.
George Washington University just received a grant to revisit their initial study.
U.S. researchers who estimated that nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria are now investigating deaths that might have been missed and could be linked to infrastructure damaged by the Category 4 storm, officials announced Wednesday.
The Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University received a nearly $1 million contract from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the investigation. University officials said the project seeks to improve the death certification process and building standards across the U.S. mainland ahead of future storms as part of a collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico and others. [...]
It is one of four projects that studies the impact of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and launched by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. The $5 million investigation is only the fourth one conducted by the institute. The others focused on the World Trade Center towers, a Rhode Island nightclub fire and the 2011 tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri.
As Hurricane Maria’s three-year anniversary approaches on September 20, we should not allow Trump’s lies and continuing failures on the island to be dismissed. He is the president of Puerto Rico, after all. The dead cannot speak out, nor vote him out. That’s our job.