It's not premature when after Katrina, by this point in time, the death toll was over 100. The East Palestine disaster is still clocking a zero (thankfully).
The death toll at this time during Katrina tells us nothing about what to expect in this completely orthogonal scenario, unless you believe that the mortality associated with a category 5 hurricane plays out on the same timescale as exposure to these particular chemicals. It's simply not a useful analogy.
I think it would also be unwise to draw unfounded conclusions about deaths-to-come as if they're some foregone conclusion, because we are in a stage of not knowing the full impact of what happened. At the same time, we also live in a world where we now understand the long term impacts of things like asbestos and a myriad of other chemicals/substances, and concern seems warranted.
But this is neither the first spill of vinyl chloride nor the first train derailment releasing toxic chemicals. We actually have plenty of data on these kinds of disasters to have a fairly confident model of what to expect.
Has the equivalency of this spill to past spills been established?
I haven’t found anything confirming that this spill is believed to match the characteristics of other spills in such a way that would alleviate concerns.
