We clarify the distinction between direct and indirect effects of disasters such as Hurricane María and use data from the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics System to estimate monthly excess deaths in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane which struck the island in September of 2017. We use a Bayesian linear regression model fitted to monthly data for 2010–2016 to predict monthly death tallies for all months in 2017, finding large deviations of actual numbers above predicted ones in September and October of 2017 but much weaker evidence of excess mortality in November and December of 2017. These deviations translate into 910 excess deaths with a 95% uncertainty interval of 440 to 1390. We also find little evidence of big pre-hurricane mortality spikes in 2017, suggesting that such large spikes do not just happen randomly and, therefore, the post-hurricane mortality spike can reasonably be attributed to the hurricane.

中文翻译：

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死亡人数过多和飓风玛丽亚

我们澄清了飓风玛丽亚等灾害的直接和间接影响之间的区别，并使用来自波多黎各人口动态统计系统的数据来估计 2017 年 9 月袭击该岛的飓风之后的每月超额死亡人数。我们使用贝叶斯线性回归模型拟合 2010-2016 年的月度数据，以预测 2017 年所有月份的月度死亡人数，发现实际数字与 2017 年 9 月和 10 月的预测数字存在较大偏差，但 2017 年 11 月和 12 月死亡率过高的证据要弱得多. 这些偏差转化为 910 例超额死亡人数，95% 的不确定性区间为 440 到 1390。我们还发现几乎没有证据表明 2017 年飓风前死亡率出现大幅上升，这表明此类大幅上升并非随机发生，因此，飓风过后的死亡率飙升可以合理地归因于飓风。