[Alberta's Child]

So if this is an exponentially increasing trend, as it appears to be, figure on thousands of deaths next year, and hundreds of thousands in 2004.

So there you go -- You've made a reasonable prediction, so let's just sit back and see what happens.

One thing to remember, though. A virus isn't likely to kill anyone after they've already been exposed to it and only showed mild symptoms. Even if the symptoms are mild, the infected person's body has developed an immunity to it just by fighting it off.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the rise in incidence of West Nile in the U.S. For one thing, there are far more people traveling here from other parts of the world today than there were even ten years ago. The virus appears to have spread from the Northeast and across the Midwest, which is consistent with the fact that most international travelers are likely to land in the U.S. somewhere in an east coast city. Also, it's entirely possible that there were quite a few cases of West Nile that were not properly diagnosed back in 1997 -- an 80 year-old man with flu-like symptoms who took a turn for the worse and died could easily have been diagnosed with something else. Like "death by natural causes."

[Wil H]

You may be right about the past mis-diagnosis but I don't think you can find facts to support your theory of an increase in international travel. Nor does you immunity theory hold a great deal of water, if what you say is true we would only ever have one cold, one bout of flue and herpes sufferers would never have flare ups.

But my original point was that it is conceivable that Iraq has the wherewithal to spread the disease, and guess what, it is spreading. So we should at least consider the possibility that the alarming increase could be linked to malicious action, just as the sniper could possibly be a terrorist - that's all