At 08:03 AM 3/6/01 -0800, you wrote:
>This West Nile thing has been going around on BirdChat since
>it was first discovered (I finally had to make a kill file to
>filter it out).
>
>The guys at the center for disease control are charged with
>monitoring the spread of disease. News people are charged
>with reporting these in as interesting as possible ways.
>
>I listened to the report and would like to emphasize:
>1. most people who (probably) had the disease thought they
>had severe flew and recovered. The death rate from this
>repeatedly referred to as deadly disease is still way in
>the background compared to almost every other preventable
>cause of death (gun related deaths immediately comes to mind,
>but that would be editorializing).
>2. even though hundreds of bird were being sent to the lab,
>it is not clear how many died of West Nile and how much was
>an artifact of people suddenly becoming aware of dead birds.
>
>Should the CDC take this seriously, of course. Should we
>be concerned about preventing a disease that has the potential
>to cause deaths, of course.
>
>Should we bring back DDT as has been suggested?
>Should we start anti-crow campaigns and "manage" bird migration
>as has been suggested?
>
>This is one of those issues that demands perspective, because
>it's the kind of thing that the media likes to wave around
>on those days when there's not enough bad weather or sex to
>report on (oops, I'm editorializing again).


Yeah, well, I completely agree. Weather's easy to report, and everyone wants sex. The media dream is sexy weather, although at my age it's more like weathered sex.

DDT's in use in Central America as a Malaria preventative, and one can imagine the amount of over-use.

So, having heard of this and other viruses as well from time to time, my question had to do with the reaction to reports like this from the birding community as well as to the disease as it works its way westward. I don't know what qualifications the "doctor" had who lives in Fort Collins and predicts the possible demise of whole species of birds. But I also have not heard much response from the birders, amateur or pro, and was wondering if any had been made.