YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- Hantavirus in Yosemite. West
Nile virus in 48 states. Even a case of bubonic plague. "I hear
locusts are next," says Cathi Soriano of Seattle, who recently
took Yosemite National Park off a road-trip itinerary. Are we
under siege? Not really, but the medical victories we've
experienced over the past 100 years have made Americans forget
that such diseases haven't gone away, says David Dausey,
director of the Institute for Public Health at Mercyhurst
Universityin Erie, Pa. "It's unsettling to realize that we're
not entirely safe from these things." The rise of hantavirus and
West Nile virus, neither even recognized in the United States
before 1993, is making people check their window screens, stock
up on bug spray and rethink travel plans. In Yosemite this
summer, hantavirus has killed three people out of nine sickened.
Nationally, West Nile virus is the worst it's been since the
disease arrived on our shores in 1999: more than 3,545 illnesses
and 147 deaths as of Thursday. Ext