>>Maybe 60 for eventual cancer deaths for people that were actually on-site.
It's the 10,000+ numbers that I take real issue with. And am skeptical of even the 4,000 "agreed-upon" estimate. I don't doubt radiation was released. I don't doubt radiation exposure can increase risk of cancer.
But when you need statistical methods to calculate deaths, that's just not as meaningful as counting body bags on-site. I get that radiation plays a part in increased cancer risk.
Claiming that there were 1,010,000 cancer deaths, but there should have only been 1,000,000, and not being able to tell which 10,000 were "caused by Chernobyl" is problematic for me. It diminishes the pain of the other 1,000,000. Is this logical? Idk
Some studies in Fukushima claim over 1,000 more people have died by continued forced evacuation, than if they been had been allowed to return to the exclusion zone after a few weeks.
It just gets hard to take these numbers seriously when you only have statistical speculation to rely on. Moreso to treat them with the same equivalence as deaths on-site.
Agreed, but it's necessary if the government lies to you -- which of course was a frequent problem with the soviets.
More recently, the Puerto Rico death toll for Hurricane Maria was just 64, and remained that way for a year. The only way it was eventually changed was proving (through statistical analysis) that the death toll was in fact higher.
And that's my point. There are really two sets of numbers that are being called the same thing when they clearly are not.
You can say "See, Chernobyl wasn't so bad. Nuclear power accidents aren't as bad as they say." Meanwhile the mismanagement of Chernobyl is still regarded as one of the greatest atrocities that came from the Soviets.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/29/18285367/c...
In the immediate aftermath, Trump repeatedly complained about how expensive it was to help the island, and said the hurricane wasn’t a “real catastrophe.”
“If you look at the — every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died and what happened here with a storm that was just totally overbearing. No one has ever seen anything like that. What is your death count?” he said during his visit after the hurricane.
And I still think 64 is closer to the real death toll for Maria. It's certainly no where near 3000. People who have been through a hurricane know what it's like. You don't need to inflate your numbers to get sympathy. A body count based on "expected mortality rates" is by-definition, not a body count.
"Which meant that in the first few weeks and deaths after the storm, doctors failed to record many deaths that were indirectly related to the storm..."
They even admit that they're "indirect" deaths. Maria didn't kill those people. If people that died weeks later are being counted, that's absolutely wrong.
You can be against Trump's policies, but no one can claim with a straight face that Puerto Rico wasn't at fault for the state of their infrastructure. Or empty bank accounts.
The reporters needed a shock-value to try and get people in the US to care. It didn't work.
(Also, vox isn't exactly a neutral source, even by mainstream standards.)
A better statement would have been that "the soviet union reported 31 immediate deaths at the time".
That 30 number was highly disputed unto itself, and doesn't include fatal cancers directly caused by radiation exposure.
There's an entire wikipedia page about it if you're interested in learning more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...