The Buzz on Rift Valley Fever

June 30, 2004

It’s been mosquito hell out at my hideout near Lake Michigan this year, and I noticed that even my neighbor has one of those new propane-powered skeeter-eaters out in his yard. You step out of your car and a brown hurricane engulfs you from all vectors. Thank God for DEET -- there’s nothing I like better than spending hours spraying these little buggers through our cottage window screen with a jumbo can of Deep Woods Off.
Well not really, but just when we were getting comfortable with the idea of West Nile virus, Lyme disease, Mad Cowburgers and SARS, now comes news that Rift Valley fever may be on its way here from Africa.
Most of us are so busy checking our ankles for Lyme-bearing ticks and probing dead bird carcasses in our yards that we barely have time for another lethal mosquito-bourne virus.
But the dreary details of the latest bug problem could nudge you into high swatting mode.
“Rift Valley fever is the only disease at the top of both human health and agriculture lists of dangerous diseases,” states an AP news report. “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.”
Turns out that Rift Valley fever kills up to 30% of infected livestock -- a disaster for the meat industry if and when its products must be pulled from the shelves. People-wise, “About 14 percent of those seriously ill with Rift Valley fever in previous outbreaks died. West Nile kills about 10 percent of those with serious complications, such as brain inflammation.”
At least 30 species of mosquitoes can transmit the disease, “far more than the kind of mosquitoes that can carry West Nile.”
That last bit would seem to be especially bad news in mosquito-infested Northern Michigan. If one percent of the million people who live and visit Northern Michigan were infected with Rift Valley each summer, we‘d rack up 1,000 deaths per year. Of course, in Africa, it‘s usually the very young, the very old or very weak who die of such things, so lets imagine that only 100 people succumbed to Rift Valley here each year. That‘s more than enough people to inspire a sense of dread when mosquito season kicks in.
I tend to have a flip response to the perennial warnings of new diseases headed our way. But the other day my wife and daughter came down with severe coughs and fevers that kept them up all night and my mind lept to the fear that they could have SARS. As it turned out, they just had the same nasty bug going around the region, but things seem a lot more serious in a very short time when you‘re worried about people you love.
On a trip to Hong Kong last summer, I had a chance to glimpse what the Chinese were doing to control SARS. In addition to filling out health questionnaires required to cross the border, you had to step on infrared footpads at the airport to measure your body temperature to see if you had any telltale fever present. And there were billboards scattered around reminding people not to spit on the floor (the Chinese are apparently great spitters -- gobbing at the mall even), or to sneeze in other peoples’ faces. Later that year, they killed off several millions ducks and chickens, hoping to head off the deadly bird flu.
The Chinese take epidemics seriously because they have literally hundreds of millions of people crowded together in close proximity to animals such as chickens, rats and pigs, engendering cross-species afflictions like AIDS and bird flu which leap from animal to human hosts.
Will we be as wise if Rift Valley fever drifts our way? Seems like every summer brings a new Bug o’ the Year our way, incubated in some godawful tropical disease laboratory like the Congo or central China; either some ancient curse which has been refining itself over thousands of years of fiddling with the human race, or a new pathogen horror that has crossed species from a bird or a monkey to infest the human race. Some scientists claim that malaria and dengue fever will reappear in America in the years ahead, courtesy of global warming -- probably around the same time that palm trees start sprouting in the U.P.
And some say a really bad germ will show up at some point -- courtesy of our goodhearted, patriotic biowarfare scientists, perhaps -- which will make the AIDS virus and SARS look like fruit flies in tu-tus by comparison, and all the wet dreams of the folks at the Zero Population Growth organization will come true with people dropping off like coconuts in a hurricane.
That’s why I’m going to party like it’s 2099 at this week’s Cherry Festival. I’m going to spend recklessly at the beer tent and eat a lot of deep-fried, high-carb sweet & sour chicken and rice with a greasy egg roll and big fat-laden cherry sundaes at the Open Space. I’m going to stand too close to the speakers at Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and gyrate wildly to Asleep at the Wheel... You just never know if Rift Valley fever or some other cootie is sneaking up on you -- maybe a lot of hard partying and bad blood chemistry will shut that rascal down before it gets a foothold on your insides. In any case, I’d rather be done in by a cherry sundae than a mosquito any day... knock on wood.