Word: nile
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...task of making all those dazzling sentences add up to a novel that he sometimes goes astray. Some of the sharpest words concern Clint Smoker's odious tabloid, the Lark. What was in a terrorist group's "dirty bomb?"an editor asks. "Radioactive medical waste, Chief, plus ringworm, West Nile virus, liquid gangrene and a cladding of mad cow." The bombing story is squeezed out by news of a man injured outside a kiddies' swimming pool when he is caught watching too closely and flees with his pants round his ankles. Headline: Pervs Him Right. Yellow Dog isn't just...
...headed into the virus's late-summer sweet spot, and the CDC reported last week that the number of West Nile cases has begun to shoot up--right on schedule. By week's end, 470 cases--and 10 deaths--had been reported in the U.S., in 25 states from Florida to Wyoming. That's three times as many cases as in the previous week and nearly twice as many compared with the same time last year...
...right to hedge its bets. The number of West Nile deaths was actually slightly higher last year at this time. That, say CDC officials, probably reflects the fact that more people are being tested and milder cases are being reported. "A quarter to a third of the cases last year were considered mild. This year it's up to half," says Dr. Tony Marfin, a CDC scientist who specializes in West Nile disease...
...also reflects the fact that West Nile has been moving inexorably westward since it arrived in the Northeast in 1999. Diseases tend to expand their range until something stops them, and because this one is transmitted mostly by mosquitoes, which live in every state, there's not much stopping it. (It can also be transmitted by blood transfusion, but on July 1, the Food and Drug Administration authorized two experimental tests now being used on the nation's blood supply...
...this point," says Stephen Ostroff, deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, "we have every reason to believe that the 2003 outbreak will be just as severe as last year's, and that one was unprecedented." With a few hundred deaths a year, West Nile isn't likely to become a major killer anytime soon. But it's not going to be easily eradicated either...