MARIA was a brief visitor to Puerto Rico. The category-4 hurricane made landfall at 6am on September 20th last year and 11 hours later she was gone. She left a trail of destruction. Some 300,000 people were displaced; and the death toll? No one knows for sure.
The official estimate of 64 deaths seemed measly by contrast. That number includes only those directly killed by the hurricane, from flying debris and the like. Importantly, it excludes indirect deaths: disruptions to medical care or hurricane-induced suicides, for example. A back-of-the envelope calculation by The Economist of excess mortality above that expected by deaths in previous years puts the toll at about 1,200.
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