Replies

The first infected birds die, yes, but once the mosquitoes here are infected they infect the birds who fly back to Cuba. The idea that they fly back in the winter & the mosquitoes here are dormant is not correct. In the South US there is never a time that the mosquitoes are dormant.

Only in dry weather, when they have no breeding place, are mosquitoes not prevelant in the south, then & when the temperature is 40 or below. I had one of the worst infestations of mosquitoes last Jan & Feb here in Houston that I can remember. Thats when I bought a Mosquito Magnet.

Once the cycle is started Cuba *will* be infected.

When the West Nile virus first emerged in the U.S as the cause of the encephalitis outbreak in NY, it was considered an epidemiological mystery. The discovery made by an alert veterinarian in the Bronx Zoo, Ms Tracey McNamara, baffled the CDC because that virus had never been present in the Western Hemisphere. There was an initial search for explanations and one writer, Robert Preston, published a story in the October 18-25 issue of The New Yorker, that this was being investigated under the hypothesis that it could be the work of Saddam Hussein. In that story (105) Saddam is quoted as referring to "his final weapon, developed in laboratories outside Iraq...Free of UN inspection, the laboratories will develop strain SV1417 of the West Nile virus."

Needless to say that in the complacent environment that prevailed at the time, the possibility to select birds to "host" the introduction of viruses, such as the West Nile, in the US was perceived as insane as, say, flying passenger planes as missiles into the World Trade Center. The whole idea was utterly rejected by an anonymous CIA spokesman who, in a story in The Washington Post of October 12, 1999, stated categorically that "to imply that there is an investigation gives more credibility to that hypothesis than it deserves." End of the story.

Source: West Nile Virus: Is Castro's Bioterrorism Threat Being Ignored?