Good morning!
Some time ago I read that Senator Leahy wanted an investigation into West Niles Disease and he thought it was a form of terrorism.
Duh. A lousy germ warfare virus. Mainly kills the elderly, and only a small number of deaths. Unless, of course, you are talking about crows. Lots of them die.
Let's get serious. Most cases of WNV have no symptoms, or few symptoms. It started in NYC. Lots of Arabs/Egyptians/Iraqis/Iranians/etc. in NYC.
Someone flew over with a mild case of WNV, got bitten by a New York Mosquito, and bingo, epidemic.
West Nile has been widely known since 1937 - from the Nile basin to the southern parts of the old Soviet Union.
There were labs in the US which had samples of it-notably the Yale Arborvirus Research Unit in Connecticut,which had 27 strains of the virus under study.(If you want to play "conspiracy theories",you might find something "sinister" in the fact the lab director moved to Texas in 1995,taking the samples with him. )
The State of Ct. had its own samples,in a lab established in 1997.Arborviruses-spread by biting insects-are nothing new in the US,and were often under study.
There is a hypothesis the US Agriculture lab on Plum Island might have had specimens,but they have always denied that: insisting they had to "order takeout" when the virus first became widely known on the east coast.( The author of "Lab 257", Michael Christopher Carroll,suggests Plum Island might have had samples of the virus,and of infected mosquitos;and that they might have been released by accident when a violent hurricane overwhelmed many of the safety mechanisms at the lab;which was, by the way,reportedly inadequately maintained for several years.)
In point of fact, West Nile has been appearing in Puerto Rico,which is well south of Cuba:at a time which suggests infected birds are flying north to Puerto Rico.Presumably,the disease will soon appear in Cuba.
The great weakness of the WND story is the "boomerang effect": If one were to infect migratory birds in Cuba,wouldn't it be wise to have an island-wide vaccination program going,so YOUR people would have immunity when the birds migrated back a few months later ? (There is no known vaccine,although the Israelis have beeen working on one,and have made some breakthroughs.)
WND often has interesting stories,but they seem over-fond of sensationalism at times.