And the Hype Goes On: The hype about West Nile virus never seems to end. Seven people, mostly very elderly, have died from it, and all of them lived in mosquito-infested Louisiana. The media reports continue to be over-the-top on this. Seven deaths wouldn't be big news for any other disease. I've yet to see the newspaper story, for example, that calls for better pneumonia vaccination rates in the elderly because seven of them died in one state from the disease. The hype feeds on itself. Patients are more likely to request testing for the virus for symptoms they may have passed off as a run-of-the-mill virus before the media reports; and doctors, for the same reason, are more likely to order the tests. Take this woman:

In Indiana, a 46-year-old woman who was hospitalized for four days with flu-like symptoms turned out to be infected with West Nile virus, said Dr. William Dannacher, the health officer for Wabash County. She has since recovered and been discharged, he said

Normally, a case like that would be treated as an unspecified viral illness and no special testing would be done, especially since she recovered uneventfully. I doubt very much that her physicians also tested for other potential viral culprits. Let's face it, there are a host of infectious agents out there carried by insects. West Nile isn't the only one, and it isn't really much of a threat, either.