Captain Trips is in the US

Rob Stein at the Washington Post reports on this killer virus:

..."What was so striking was to see patients who were otherwise healthy be just devastated," Gilbert said. Within a day or two of developing a cough and high fever, some were so sick they would arrive at the emergency room gasping for air.

"They couldn't breathe," Gilbert said. "They were going to die if we didn't get more oxygen into them."

Gilbert alerted state health officials, a decision that led investigators to realize that a new, apparently more virulent form of a virus that usually causes nothing worse than a nasty cold was circulating around the United States. At least 1,035 Americans in four states have been infected so far this year by the virus, known as an adenovirus. Dozens have been hospitalized, many requiring intensive care, and at least 10 have died....

..."This virus has the capability of causing severe respiratory illness in people of all ages, regardless of their medical condition," said John Su, a disease investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based in Texas, where the largest outbreak is tapering off at an Air Force base after 10 months. Other outbreaks have been reported in Washington state and South Carolina, along with a single case in an infant in New York City....

...The new adenovirus is a variant of a strain known as adenovirus 14. First identified in Holland in 1955, it has caused sporadic outbreaks in Europe and Asia. No outbreaks, however, had ever been documented in the Western Hemisphere.

But then Gilbert started seeing patients like Joseph Spencer, 18, a high school varsity swimmer who was suddenly racked by fever, chills and vomiting.

"At first I thought it was just the flu," Spencer said. "But then it was the worst feeling I ever had. I felt so miserable. I really felt like I was dying."...

... At about the same time, health officials learned of another outbreak affecting four residents of a nursing home in Washington state, including one person who died, as well as a far larger outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. At least 579 recruits have been infected since February at the base, including at least 24 who had to be hospitalized. One recruit, Paige Villers, 19, of Norton, Ohio, died after getting mononucleosis and the virus....

...Another 220 cases later turned up at other Texas military bases, along with about 200 more cases at the Marine Corps' Parris Island installation in South Carolina.

Investigators also determined that an otherwise healthy 12-day-old girl who died in Manhattan in May 2006 had been infected with the same strain.

A genetic analysis of the microbe at the CDC revealed that the currently circulating version of the virus is slightly different from the original 1955 strain, suggesting the microbe had mutated in some way to make it more virulent....

...In Oregon, further testing has shown that the virus now accounts for more than half of all adenovirus infections. "That's shocking," said Paul Lewis, a state health investigator. "It went from being imperceptible to being the majority."...

..."You hear of people dying of pneumonia, but it's usually older people. Not a 19-year-old in the prime of her life."