I think this is much closer to the truth.

Steven Kopits of Princeton Policy Advisers, a critic of the Harvard study, notes that the available registry data, which still is incomplete, shows 654 excess deaths above the previous year through December. On the face of it, he said, the Harvard number makes little sense because that means 4,000 bodies would be missing – when only 45 were reported as missing as of December.

“With the power outage following the hurricane, residents in ill health and near death died prematurely for lack of access to life-sustaining services like respirators, dialysis and air conditioning,” he said. “These deaths were principally attributable to an extended loss of power. On the other hand, most of these people were under the care of family or professional staff, and their deaths were recorded in near real time. Virtually all those who died in 2017 have been properly accounted for. There are materially no missing bodies.”