first off I i really hate mosquitoes and it's mosquito season here, so maybe that's why this struck me...
Read this article, what am I missing? it says that the last known case was in 2001, the disease is currently not in North America, the disease could
be used as a weapon, so why the alert now? Is there a threat that we don't know about? Why should we be aware of symptoms? I think there is
greater chance of mosquito borne viruses around than we are led to believe...and that this may be very likely probability in the near future...
btw....how does a mosquito travel from africa to north america? I wasn't aware of any birds who fly from africa to the usa..but that's just my lack
of knowledge.
Federal Health Officials Alert To Threat Of New Mosquito Disease
ATLANTA -- As if West Nile virus wasn't bad enough, now U.S. health officials are on the lookout for another mosquito-bourne disease, fearing it
could become a permanent part of the American landscape if it entered the country.
Rift Valley fever, which originated in Africa, is the only disease at the top of both human health and agriculture lists of dangerous diseases.
The virus can kill people, with a near 1 percent mortality rate, making it deadlier than West Nile. But Rift Valley poses a greater threat to cattle
and sheep.
It kills up to 30 percent of the livestock it infects and if it were found in animals here, it would probably prompt livestock bans by other
countries.
"This is not a disease that occurs here now, but we want to make sure people are aware of the signs and symptoms," said Dr. Thomas Ksiazek, chief of
the special pathogens branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The medical and public health community need to be mindful of
it."
"I think people weren't very worried about it until we started to think about agri-terror," Brown said.
The disease could appear here as mysteriously as West Nile, which first showed up as the culprit in the unexplained deaths of birds in New York in
1999.
let's hope not. 
