The fake 'tripledemic' that was 90% RSV and almost zero COVID-19

 Already by the last week of October 2022, continuing through November and early December, local Rhode Island media were amplifying clinician and public health official warnings about a paediatric respiratory illness 'tripledemic'. The 'tripledemic' that prompted this tocsin of looming calamity in children was an alleged convergence of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Serious paediatric illness is best gauged by the actual number of children hospitalised, as opposed to 'respiratory virus test positivity'. The latter is especially misleading because of the unique, ongoing phenomenon of continued mass COVID-19 testing for minimal symptoms. Curiously, almost two months later, I could find no local media follow-up coverage elucidating the feared paediatric 'tripledemic' by this most germane metric: a direct comparison of children hospitalised for COVID-19, influenza or RSV.

With the cooperation of Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) spokesman Joseph Wendelken, and an academic paediatrician at Hasbro Children's Hospital.

The high rate of paediatric RSV hospitalisations alone in October-November should not be shrilly exploited by the media or so-called medical authorities to make counterfactual claims of an RSV, COVID-19 and influenza 'tripledemic'. Instead, RSV, and now influenza, far more than COVID-19, should be accepted for what they are, i.e., part of the natural cycle of paediatric respiratory infections, and treated calmly, and with caring...<<<Read More>>>...