<x-flowed>I suspect there will be different responses to weather in different
ecosystems, even within the US. Also, we don't know whether the current WNV
situation in LA ans MS is due to something peculiar about this year's
weather, or just because it took until now for WNV to fully establish itself
there. It may be that we're seeing a lot of human WNV there because their
mosquito species are relatively good vectors (feeding habits and
transmission ability), they have a long season, and people in the area just
get bitten a lot. You can't really relate WNV to weather in the US the way
you might long-established viruses like SLE or EEE, because the system has
not yet had time to "equilibrate". And I note that the relationship between
SLE, EEE and weather is not exactly clear, despite many years of study.
We'll need quite a few years of experience with WNV in our ecosystems to
sort these things out. Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to get
them. I'm glad I'm working in a county where our common house mosquito
prefers to bite birds, 90 dgree temps are the exception rather than the rule
and where much of the landscape is relatively high and dry.
</x-flowed>
Received on Mon Aug 19 17:20:59 2002
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