You mean there's more than one virus out there?!?!?!?!?
Early versions of COVID-19 largely spared children but the delta variant proved to be much less discriminating, and has led to more child hospitalizations. Now, health care workers on the front lines say there is another frightening prospect looming: a surge in children diagnosed with a combination of COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus.
Oh no!! What is this "respiratory syncytial virus?" Did it come from a Chinese bioweapons lab? Did someone eat an infected wombat? Is there any way we can protect ourselves?
Not really, no.
You see, respiratory syncytial virus, or "RSV," is extremely common, and pretty much everyone has gotten it by the age of two.
Here's what the Mayo Clinic has to say about it:
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes infections of the lungs and respiratory tract. It's so common that most children have been infected with the virus by age 2. Respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-ul) virus can also infect adults...
RSV can cause severe infection in some people, including babies 12 months and younger (infants), especially premature infants, older adults, people with heart and lung disease, or anyone with a weak immune system (immunocompromised).
So, yes, it's your basic contagious virus, has been around for forever, and is primarily dangerous for those with pre-existing conditions.
Why the hysterics now? I mean, other than another attempt to fan the flames of fear and exploit parents' love for their children in order to consolidate power in the hands of a few?
Because hospitals are under siege!!!
Take Texas as an example. (They love using Texas because it's all freedomy and everything.)
More children are being treated in Texas hospitals for COVID-19 than ever before. But there's a second factor that is putting pediatric hospitals on the path to being overwhelmed: an unseasonable outbreak of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a highly contagious virus that can require hospitalization mostly among children 5 years and younger and especially infants.
Why the surge?
No one got it last year and now the virus is playing catch up.
Call it, "herd susceptibility."
Why, it's almost as if locking up an entire society for a year is unnatural and disrupts the impossibly complex and still poorly understood dynamics of the entire biosphere, yielding a spread of dire and unanticipated consequences!
But it wasn't locking people in their houses that was the problem, it's that people aren't wearing masks anymore because of course.
During the last year, RSV was largely dormant, which experts believe was due to people masking up during the pandemic. Now, in just the last several weeks, thousands of Texas children have tested positive for the virus.
They do love their masks.
Well, not their masks, yours.
So be careful out there, mask up, shelter in place, and protect yourself from the pathogens.
