Let Them Count the Dead Their Way

The following has caused quite a bit of consternation in the dKos community since it appeared on the Times Picayune's website two days ago:

Sheriff Harry Lee said Saturday night that the Jefferson Parish Coroner's office had processed 152 bodies, but only 20 of those were deaths related to Hurricane Katrina. He said the coroner's office was picking up bodies that are reported lying in the street and handling them to FEMA's specifications. He also said that body count does not include bodies that may have been taken to the morgue in St. Gabriel.

We expect the government to try to conceal the death toll. It's a well-known tactic of despots, from the Soviet Union to El Mozote.

Otis704 pointed out yesterday that the standard applied for a "hurricane related" death when Andrew struck Lousiana in 1992 was straight from the CDC:

A hurricane-related fatal or nonfatal injury/illness was defined as one that occurred from 12 noon August 24 through 12 midnight September 21 that resulted from the preparation for, impact of, or clean-up after the hurricane and required treatment in a hospital ER or caused death.

Either Harry Lee didn't get the memo, or Bushco is trying to apply a different standard here. As Els pointed out in her brilliant diary yesterday, the standard for Katrina is going to be quite different:

Although body-recovery operations were still under
way, the death toll represents the number of bodies that have been counted where the deaths were a result of Katrina's winds, rains or floodwaters, or those who died as a result of medical equipment that became inoperable during the hurricane.

Which is how, with 152 bodies to deal with, Jefferson Parish finds that only 20 deaths were hurricane-related.

So what did the other 132 die of? Most likely the deaths resulted from:

• "medical equipment that became inoperable" after the hurricane
  
• lack of insulin and other medication
  
• hyperthermia (heat)
  
• dehydration
  
• electrocution
  
• other accidents
  
• suicide
  
• homicide
  
• cardiac arrest
  
• shock
  
• water-borne diseases, including dysentery, cholera, and infected wounds
  
• poisoning
  
• snake-bite
  
• alligator or other animal attack

And other awful stuff that I'd really rather not think about just now but the point here is, the other 132 deaths were caused by human error in the aftermath of the hurricane.

So let's let Bushco define hurricane-related deaths their way. Once they've separated out the deaths directly resulting from the hurricane, we'll know exactly how many times more people (it looks like 660%, based on the sample above) were killed by the sheer incompetence of George W. Bush and his appointees.