RAT BORNE VIRUS KILLS THREE IN CALIFORNIA

Comment from RMNews:

This disease sounds like the genetically targeted biowarfare virus that was created in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Las Vegas was one of the places that was in danger of contamination during the Los Alamos fire. You will see in the article below that the virus they are calling arenavirus was found in Whitewater Arroyo in New Mexico.

It would be interesting to see how similar the "hanta" virus that was discovered in 1993 is to the new arenavirus. The "hanta" virus (which has little in common with the original hanta virus) outbreak in the four corners area appears to have been a test to see if the ethnically targeted virus worked. The scientists declared victory because the only people who died were native Americans.

"State health officials believe this is the first discovery of a rodent-carrying disease in the United States since 1993, when a U.S. strain of hantavirus was found in the "Four Corners" region of the Southwest. The outbreak killed at least 26 people. Since then, 191 cases of hantavirus have been diagnosed, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

"The arenavirus strain found in the California deaths is called the Whitewater Arroyo virus, so named after the place in New Mexico where it was found in woodratsfour years ago, Jay said. "
Operation Raindance is the title of the article on genetically targeted viruses -- When you read it, you will see that it too is a RAT BOURNE DISEASE.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=2060
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Girl dies of rare virus; 2 other deaths probed: Disease believed to be spread by rodents

By Chris Bowman
Bee Staff Writer
(Published Aug. 4, 2000)

A rare virus, never before known to infect people in North America, has killed an Alameda County girl and probably two other Californians in the past 14 months, state health officials announced Thursday.

Tests showed the girl died of an arenavirus,which is believed to be transmitted to humans through inhalation of dust carrying the urine, feces or saliva of infected rodents, officials said.
The arenavirus is strongly suspected in the June death of a 30-year-old Orange County woman and in the death one year earlier of a 52-year-old woman in neighboring Riverside County.

The three cases were isolated and are not believed to be related, officials said.

All three victims complained of flu-like symptoms before being hospitalized with high fevers, internal bleeding and fluid buildup in their lungs, the officials said.

Rodent infections with the arenavirus have been documented in Southern California in the past few years, but human infections have been observed only in travelers returning from overseas and in laboratory personnel accidentally exposed while doing research, said Diana Bonta, the state health director.

Officials said the Alameda County girl was on life support for four months before her death in April. She was 14. The Southern California women died within a week of their hospitalizations.
Officials do not believe the disease is communicable; neither members of the victims' families nor health care workers who treated them have contracted the virus.

The state Department of Health Services alerted physicians statewide Thursday to be on the lookout for similar symptoms and to report to public health authorities any suspected cases, either pending or past.

"We could find that it has occurred in the past but was so rare that we never found it," said MicheleJay, a lead scientist in the state's investigation.

Investigators are trying to find out how the victims became infected by the virus and whether it is treatable. The antiviral agent Ribavirinhas been successfully used in the tropics for treatment of other arenavirus infections. Several arenaviruses known to cause mild to severe infection occur in West Africa and South America.

The best-known arenavirus is the Lassa strain, a deadly infection that has been found only in Africa. About 16 percent of its victims die. Even more deadly is the Machupo virus, which produces Brazilian hemorrhagic fever and kills 60 percent of victims.

State health officials believe this is the first discovery of a rodent-carrying disease in the United States since 1993, when a U.S. strain of hantavirus was found in the "Four Corners" region of the Southwest. The outbreak killed at least 26 people. Since then, 191 cases of hantavirus have been diagnosed, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

The arenavirus strain found in the California deaths is called the Whitewater Arroyo virus, so named after the place in New Mexico where it was found in woodratsfour years ago, Jay said.
The discovery prompted Southern California health officials to begin looking for the virus. Several of the woodrats they have trapped have tested positive for antibodies of the virus, Jay said.

Woodrats, also known as packrats, are found mostly in rural and suburban areas. They build large nests out of sticks and other debris in trees and on the ground.

Doctors who treated the three California victims were exasperated in their search for a cause and cure, Jay said.
"The workup on these patients was extensive," she said. "They were tested for many different bacteria and viruses -- from influenza all the way to the hantavirus."

Details in the death of the Riverside County woman led scientists to suspect a rodent virus, Jay said.

The autopsy indicated that the woman had bled internally, a tell-tale sign of an arenavirus at work. In a deathbed interview, she recalled cleaning up rodent droppings. And that exposure occurred in an area where vector control workers had found woodrats infected with the virus.

"Those are the pieces that came together that made us look for it," Jay said

Charles Folhurst, a scientist at the University of Texas Medical Branchin Galveston isolated and identified the Whitewater Arroyo virus in a specimen from the Alameda County patient, Jay said.
The virus was detected in the bodies of the two other victims through testing of virus genes, which all but confirms it was the culprit.

Few laboratories in the United States are equipped to test for the Whitewater Arroyo virus, Jay said. California health officials are scrambling to establish the tests, she said.

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