Yes, everyone is sick right now. So what can you do about it?
Does it feel like everyone you know is sick right now? It’s not your imagination: It’s been a particularly fierce season for all kinds of respiratory infections, from mild colds to more serious bugs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), health care visits for coughs and sore throats with fever were “above baseline” for the eighth consecutive week by the end of December. Hospital admissions for flu, RSV, and Covid-19 are ticking up ahead of schedule.
The increase isn’t itself atypical. “Pre-Covid, we always saw a surge of hospitalized patients in this winter time period, especially after New Years,” said Dhaval Desai, who oversees hospital medicine at Emory University’s St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta. But compared to five years ago, “we are at a more intense spot from a respiratory illness standpoint,” he said.
It’s not entirely clear why this particular season is so gnarly. Although the CDC focuses its tracking on the viruses most likely to cause severe illness and death — Covid-19, flu, and RSV — lots of other germs with less name recognition are landing people in the hospital.
