Last year they estimated that it could be around 186,000 - this seems much more conservative, and it's many months later. Any idea why?
The researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024, estimating 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period
The estimate of 64,000 only accounts for people killed directly by weapons or bombing, similar to the count of ~40,000 that the Gaza Health Ministry was maintaining before they lost the ability to maintain the count.
The estimate of 186,000 from the other study accounts for indirect deaths from destruction of medical facilities, lack of clean water, lack of food, etc., which is a much more important number, but is not receiving as much attention for obvious reasons.
Well, the Lancet is a journal, so these would be studies by different authors using different methodologies.
Is there any (non-handwavy) explanation for why the official death toll stalked out at 40k for what feels like almost a year?
in simple words, they destroyed every official institution and displaced every official. it stalled out because the institution that is most able to keep track, outside of the genocidal occupying force, is no longer able to do so.
They targeted the government buildings where records were kept and destroyed communications infrastructure to prevent coordination.
As much as corporate media wants to call Hamas a military group, they're still the governing body, and Israel targeted the civilian infrastructure of Hamas as well
