Nine American tourists have died unexpectedly in the Dominican Republic, and that has focused an uncomfortable spotlight on the Caribbean nation. Is there anything to this?
Hi everyone, this is Jeff; JR is the producer; and you’re listening to episode 169 of Plain English, the best podcast for learning English with current events. Happy Independence Day to those of you in the United States. If you want to learn more about how Americans celebrate Independence Day, we did an episode on that topic a year ago, at PlainEnglish.com/62. The transcript of this episode can be found at PlainEnglish.com/169.
On today’s episode: nine American tourists have died so far in 2019 in the Dominican Republic. Some of them died unexpectedly, many after drinking liquor. Now many Americans are wondering if the Caribbean island destination is safe to visit. Plus, later in the episode we’ll talk about what it means for chances to be slim. And JR has a song of the week.
Before we jump in, I wanted to remind you about Audible. They’re the ones who bring us audiobooks online. One a month for being a subscriber. Check it out and get one audiobook for free at PlainEnglish.com/book .
Tourist deaths in Dominican Republic
A recent spate of tourist deaths in the Dominican Republic has many Americans asking if the tropical island is safe. So far in 2019, eight Americans have died while vacationing in the Dominican Republic, and many of the deaths happened at luxury resorts. The most recent was a 56-year-old man from Long Island, New York, who fell sick after having something to drink, and was dead later the same night. Other deaths include a couple from Maryland who were found dead at their hotel room; a 41-year-old Pennsylvania woman who collapsed and died at the same hotel; a 55-year old man from New Jersey; and a 53-year-old woman from New York. The 41-year-old sister of a reality television star also died, though reportedly of natural causes. The couple from Maryland apparently suffered from internal bleeding and more than a few of the tourists died after having consumed alcohol from the minibar in their hotel rooms.
That’s not all. David Ortiz, a retired baseball player, was shot in the back in an apparent case of mistaken identity. The shooter—not that this makes it any better—the shooter was trying to hit someone else, but the bullet almost killed the future Hall of Famer and beloved sports icon of Boston.
Over 2 million American tourists visit the island each year, primarily to the beachfront resort towns of Punta Cana and La Romana. Many tourists also visit the capital, Santo Domingo, which is one of the earliest cities founded by European settlers in the 1400s. There are a lot of people with Dominican heritage in the New York area. Convenient flights and cultural ties make it an attractive destination for people from the Northeast of the United States.
But now a controversy is raging in the press between two sides: one that sees an unmistakable trend toward mysterious tourist deaths, and another which compares the death rate in the Dominican to that of many American cities. The latter camp can’t help but note that it’s actually safer to be a tourist in the Dominican than a resident of certain American cities.
There are some facts supporting each side. First, the chances of a visitor dying of unnatural causes such as a motor vehicle accident or homicide in the Dominican Republic are slimmer than the chances of suffering a homicide in the US. Other popular Caribbean destinations, including the Bahamas and Jamaica, experience a comparably higher rate of tourist deaths from unnatural causes. And some of the people who died had existing medical conditions. David Ortiz was shot at a nightclub in the capital, which is not the kind of place most American tourists go. All these facts argue that the publicity about the Dominican is overblown and that there is little cause for concern for tourists.
And yet. How do so many otherwise healthy people die at such a relatively young age, especially since many of them fell sick after drinking alcohol? Dominican authorities and the FBI are now investigating the possibility that counterfeit alcohol is behind the mysterious illnesses and deaths. Nine people in the last year have died of either fluid in the lungs or a heart attack, both of which are symptoms of methanol poisoning. The process of distilling alcohol involves separating ethanol, which is safe to drink, from methanol, which is poisonous. Regulated, supervised distilling does this correctly; counterfeit, cheap, unregulated distilling may not. A similar situation developed in Mexico in 2017 and 2018, where hundreds of gallons of bootleg tequila was found to have lethal levels of methanol.
It’s not known for sure if this is the cause, but one expert in food poisoning said that the idea of counterfeit alcohol is a “credible hypothesis.” One more fact for you: out of a group of 114 Jimmy Buffet fans that visited the island as a group, 47 reported getting sick.
One thing that’s not in doubt: the government of the Dominican Republic has been slow to respond to the crisis. The island’s minister of tourism, Francisco Javier Garcia, insisted that these recent deaths are neither out of the ordinary and nor mysterious. He also said that officials and hotel proprietors would enhance security and try to minimize the risks of food poisoning.
Some hotels say they have removed minibars from guest rooms. Another hotel, the Punta Cana, has said that it would put up a healthcare facility that conforms with US standards of care on its premises.
I want to say hi to Stefan from Germany. He listens to us on his three-and-a-half-hour commute. Yikes! He commutes into Munich from the city of Heidelberg. He has as a lot of international colleagues, so he uses his commute to brush up on English. And I thought those of you in Sao Paulo had long commutes…three hours wow.
By the way, I hope everyone is staying cool in Europe. From what I understand, Europe is suffering from quite a heat wave. Some of you were complaining of 40 degree temperatures. I’ll mention in a minute, but I was watching a game in London and it was 32, which is really hot for London. That’s a typical summer day here, but it’s a heat wave in London.
Anyway, I hope you’re staying cool wherever you are, and it occurs to me that if you’re going to the beach, you might want to take along an audiobook to listen to—after you’re all caught up on Plain English, obviously. Audiobooks are a fun way to experience good beach reads while you lay back and relax. A beach read is like, a book that doesn’t require too much concentration. I just started a biography of Winston Churchill: not a beach read. But the good news is you can browse thousands of audiobook titles, and even download one for free. You can listen in English or in your own language. Just visit PlainEnglish.com/book and you will find all the details you need on that page. PlainEnglish.com/book . It works just as well at the pool, too, by the way, in case you prefer the pool to the beach. PlainEnglish.com/book .
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