Given past history and the current Ebola epidemic, I can't help but wonder if this was another governmental release:
"New mosquito-borne virus spreads in Latin America" by Ezequiel Abiu Lopez and Ben Fox | Associated Press September 28, 2014
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — An excruciating mosquito-borne illness that arrived less than a year ago in the Americas is raging across the region, leaping from the Caribbean to the Central and South American mainland, and infecting more than 1 million people. Some cases have emerged in the United States.
While the disease, called chikungunya, usually is not fatal, the epidemic has overwhelmed hospitals, cut economic productivity, and caused its sufferers days of pain and misery, including joint pain so severe it can be hard to walk. And the count of victims is soaring.
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Chikungunya is a word that comes from the Makonde language of Tanzania in eastern Africa and translates roughly as ‘‘that which bends up,’’ in reference to the severe arthritis-like ache in joints that causes sufferers to contort with pain....
Hardest hit has been the Dominican Republic, [and] there have been a few locally transmitted cases in the United States, all in Florida, [with] the lack of immunity in a population that hasn’t been hit with chikungunya in modern medical history, said Scott C. Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch....
Also to be found in El Salvador, Venezuela, and Brazil.
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