Word: mosquito
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Want to know what it's like to be in the Army? Try standing in one place, ramrod straight and perfectly still. If a mosquito bites you, don't slap it. If sweat rolls into your eye, don't wipe it away. And if you scratch your thigh, do 20 push-ups and jump back into position...
Within days, Flushing Hospital admitted four more patients with similar symptoms. All were elderly and all spent time in their backyards. That suggested bites by mosquitoes carrying the St. Louis encephalitis virus, a particular menace to the elderly, though usually in the South. Tissue analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seemed to confirm the suspicion. As the tally rose, the city began an anti-mosquito spraying program in a 4-sq.-mi. area of Queens. That quick action seemed to contain the epidemic...
Thomas Monath, an expert on mosquito-borne diseases, says it could have been carried by someone recently arrived from southern Russia, currently the site of a large West Nile outbreak. If mosquitoes had gorged on his blood, they could have transmitted the virus to birds by biting them in turn--thus starting an infectious cycle deadly for some humans and birds, though never for the carrier Culex pipiens. It's a scenario, says Monath, that's become increasingly common in a jet-setting...
...York City mayor Rudy Giuliani?s epic struggle with killer mosquitoes just took a nasty twist. It turns out that the encephalitis outbreak that has killed three New Yorkers may involve a version of the virus never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that its review of the outbreak ?- identified at first as St. Louis encephalitis ?- has determined that at least one of the deaths was caused by the West Nile virus, found only in Africa and Asia. Like the St. Louis version, the virus is carried by birds and transfers...
...change may change patterns of disease ?- some plant and animal forms are certainly occurring further north than we?ve ever seen them before." Not much comfort to beleaguered New Yorkers suffering almost nightly pesticide bombardment from the mayor?s helicopters. And if climate change is a factor, the anti-mosquito crusade could be just the first of a bizarre set of epidemiological battles over the coming decades...