Why a 'tripledemic' is keeping many of us sick for weeks at a time - The Washington Post
It started in mid-September with Vance, 5, who came down with RSV and wheezed so badly that his skin was pulling in and out of his ribs with every breath. His little brother Banks, then 11 months old, caught it too. Things were just starting to get better in October, when the boys caught a nasty cold that resulted in more sleepless nights. In November, the flu hit, bringing fevers of 102 degrees.
"It feels like a never-ending cycle," said their mom, Michelle Huber of Louisville. "We are beyond exhausted."
The 2022 winter season has been one of prolonged misery for many American families, full of sniffles, sore throats, coughs and trips to the emergency room as bugs kept at bay during the pandemic have been unleashed by the resumption of our old lives.
It's like "a big bomb of viruses went off," said Christina Lane, who runs a pediatric practice in New Albany, Ind., and has seen a crush of several hundred children with respiratory symptoms in the past three months.
Parainfluenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinovirus, adenovirus, influenza A, influenza B, respiratory enterovirus and human metapneumovirus. And then, there's the rebounding coronavirus: The seven-day average of new daily cases is above 66,000, with hospitalizations above 40,000, the highest those numbers have been since mid-September and late August, respectively.
As Year 4 of the coronavirus pandemic approaches, Lane and other doctors agree the overlapping viral surges and how they are playing out are unusual and concerning: Patients with back-to-back respiratory illnesses. Simultaneous infection with three or more viruses, or with bacterial infections, such as Strep A. Otherwise healthy people suffering for weeks, rather than days, with simple colds.
Some U.S. hospitals and European health authorities also report out-of-season increases in scarlet fever and Group A streptococcus infections. As of Thursday, two children in the Denver area and 16 in the United Kingdom were confirmed to have died after infection with a rare, invasive form of the typically mild and common bacterial, rather than viral, infection.
But there is no consensus about whether what's happening is a once-in-many-years phenomenon — perhaps some of it due to the hypervigilance of Americans who have become accustomed to scrutinizing every ache and pain for signs of infection with a potentially deadly virus — a change in how viruses behave that may be with us for a while, or something else entirely.
