death in the weeds

Today I got to wondering why mosquito abatement programs suggest keeping weeds down. I was all set to learn from a Google-search excerpt that weeds are bad because mosquitoes like to live in them, but when I clicked on the link, I found the quote of the day in the first sentence:

The spread of the often-fatal West Nile virus has made all of us more aware of the need for mosquito control in our communities.

I was surprised to learn that you can label a disease 'often-fatal' when about 1 in 150 people who get it get sick enough to die. Also that the author linked to the CDC site at the bottom of her article and failed to pick up this highly pertinent fact.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm sure that the author, Janet Wickell, is a nice person, and, since you know I can't pass this kind of thing up, mosquitoes'll kill you!