Counting deaths from power outages
The last big power blackout in the US, before this week’s one, was in 2003 in New York. There’s a new paper out that estimates how many deaths it caused, and discussion at Simply Statistics.
At the time, the official report was 6 deaths, mostly due to carbon monoxide poisoning. However, the number of deaths from all causes was 28% higher than usual, which implies an extra 90 deaths (obviously, with some uncertainty).
We don’t know which of the deaths during that period were caused by the power outage, but these “statistical deaths” were just as much real people as the 6 whose deaths were officially recognised.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »