What causes kidneys to fail like this, Mark? You say the disease is already here - has it been identified?
I'm saying that with the rate of travel from that region, it has to be here by now. Think of how fast SARS swept the planet.
No, I don't know what it is, but think about this for a minute: In Central America, there is comparatively poor medical care, minimal food handling technology, refrigeration, or preservation, bad pest control, and rotten waste handling and general sanitation. Meanwhile, the incidence of this disease (although probably under-diagnosed), even under those conditions in a torrid climate, is but a few thousand cases per year. That indicates the disease is not terribly virulent or we'd have heard all about it years ago. It's probably here but producing numbers so low that we don't see it.