Every state every year will have some number of cases -- maybe it will just be a handful of cases, but it will never really just fade away completely like St. Louis encephalitis does, ... Even in the inter-epidemic period, there will always be some West Nile activity somewhere in the country.

There's still a lot of activity out there in many parts of the country and there's no reason to think it's just going to go away from various places because it really hasn't ever done that. In all the states that have had West Nile, they've maintained some level of activity for West Nile.

It's being observed that even in cases of West Nile fever, which has always been characterized as a milder disease ... that it in and of itself in certain individuals can be a very severe disease and can take individuals quite a while to recover from it.

There's always a tendency to get comfortable with the fact that this disease is out there, especially if you live in a place where you've had West Nile for four or five years and never been infected.