NPR: Winter Illnesses Return w/Vengeance; Flu High Levels, Covid, RSV Cases Also Rise, Emerg Rms Full
NPR, Jan. 8, 2025. Ed.⛄
The winter holiday rituals are behind us. It's cold and snowy in many places. And, now, unfortunately, another annual tradition is upon us. "Respiratory season is here," says Dr. Brendan Jackson, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It is getting to be in full swing now with a lot of people getting sick, a lot of people missing work, missing school, just feeling lousy in general."
People tend to travel and get together with family and friends over the holidays. The bad news is that this often means they come home with some nasty bug. And we're in the thick of that again right now. "It is ugly out there right now," says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who writes the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter.
The flu, in particular, is at high or very high levels all around the country, according to the CDC.
"We're buried with influenza. Things are very, very busy and intense," says Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease researcher at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
"The emergency room is full of people who are coughing and sneezing. We've had people waiting on gurneys — those stretchers — waiting for admission. We are really full." "Before we had 2 major viruses causing a lot of hospitalizations and deaths with RSV and flu," Schaffner says. "Even though COVID is no longer at emergency status, it still causes more hospitalizations and deaths than the other two. And so you add that together, each respiratory season on average going forward is going to be worse than it was before the pandemic because of the addition of COVID."
No one knows how bad things could get this winter. The CDC says that unless some more highly transmissible new COVID-19 variant emerges, it still looks like this winter will be like last year. But that's not great — it still means many children missing school, parents missing work and grandparents and other vulnerable people ending up in the hospital and even dying. "We've got three viruses that are going to hit with peaks that are going to be relatively closely spaced. So that as one starts to go down, the other's going to start peaking," says Dr. Andrew Pavia...
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5249736/flu-covid-rsv-infections-rise
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