They tend to congregate in one region. And this isn’t so much an immigrant international-germ issue as it is identifying the bacteria soon and beginning very aggressive treatment.
It is a bad infection and survival rate is not all that good. But you only usually hear about 2 or 3 deaths from it a year. To hear that there were 5 deaths in one state alone is pretty shocking to me, especially since most contractions are from water/fish in southern, warmer climates.
It sounded high to me too, but per the article, the CDC says 0.35 deaths per 100,000 people in the US, and there are 1,328,302 people in Maine, so they should have 4.65 deaths per year.