Something had changed. And America had a brand new disease. Some of those cases predated the Four Corners outbreak, but they were reported vaguely as acute respiratory distress syndrome, then forgotten. We had thought of it as a disease in Korea. That was a rude awakening.
Nobody ever cares what happens in Zaire or Congo.
Nobody's ever heard of the places, and if a few natives die, well, dying is a part of living. But now, what is in Zaire one day may be in New York the next. The report's cover sported an electron micrograph of the newly identified strain of hantavirus. By the end of the year, the Unexplained Illnesses and Deaths Project was underway, with investigatory branches in Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon and California.