Of course not - relying on the mass-media press results in large 'gaps' in story coverage ... PLUS not all the 'victims' are/were human ...
From: http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1999/Oct/hour2_100199.html we have this:
October 1, 1999:Last month, we told you about a disease outbreak in the New York metropolitan area that had mosquito sprayers in overdrive. At the time, the disease was thought to be St. Louis encephalitis, an insect-borne illness harbored by birds. Now, scientists are revising their diagnosis. The four deaths and dozens of hospitalizations to date, they say, were caused by another, similar disease, called West Nile Virus - a disease never seen before in the western hemisphere.
What caused the change in diagnosis? A cluster of dead crows was found near the grounds of the Wildlife Conservation Society (the Bronx Zoo) in New York. Then, some of the birds in the zoo's collection fell victim.
Zoo researchers trying to track down the cause discovered traces of the foreign virus in the birds. At the same time, health workers using advanced techniques to study the human victims of the encephalitis outbreak found signs of the West Nile virus as well.