Much has been said about the “tripledemic” of Covid-19, influenza, and RSV. But I’ve never seen a head-to-head visual comparison of hospitalization rates of these pathogens at a time when all three were circulating widely. So, Inside Medicine’s Benjy Renton and I spent the evening pulling data and throwing them onto the same graphs. In addition to grabbing data on the entire US population (see above), we also looked by age group (see below). This all yielded some important insights, which I’ll share with you now.
I think these data you have presented are mostly encouraging, except for the very young and very old as they are buffetted by these distinct but overlapping waves. Kind of like how rogue waves result from the summation of individual ones, this winter in primary care has felt more than choppy.
Although people are struggling with nasty illnesses, and I'm seeing a lot of protracted syndromes/long Covid, these data confirm what I have to admit - I'm not sending nearly as many people your way (ER) as compared to recent years. But the collateral damage of bloot clots and cardiac events keeps anecdotally happening more than I think it should.
Also as side note, my next door neighbor and good friend in Philly (J. Strauss) shares an appreciation for your work here ;) Always a small world.
Great work, Jeremy, both this project and your whole idea of this substack!! These curves remind me nostalgically of a sample of all ED visits (not just colds) I assembled from NCHS data in the early 2000s, and a throwaway hypothesis about flu vs RSV, made just to illustrate "hypothesis generation". Much sparser than the NREVSS, and utterly limited to symptoms, not diagnostic codes. Too sparse for age subgroups. I hope you're a little entertained by my editorial comments defending NHAMCS, the anti-billing codes organization.
I think these data you have presented are mostly encouraging, except for the very young and very old as they are buffetted by these distinct but overlapping waves. Kind of like how rogue waves result from the summation of individual ones, this winter in primary care has felt more than choppy.
Although people are struggling with nasty illnesses, and I'm seeing a lot of protracted syndromes/long Covid, these data confirm what I have to admit - I'm not sending nearly as many people your way (ER) as compared to recent years. But the collateral damage of bloot clots and cardiac events keeps anecdotally happening more than I think it should.
Also as side note, my next door neighbor and good friend in Philly (J. Strauss) shares an appreciation for your work here ;) Always a small world.
Great work, Jeremy, both this project and your whole idea of this substack!! These curves remind me nostalgically of a sample of all ED visits (not just colds) I assembled from NCHS data in the early 2000s, and a throwaway hypothesis about flu vs RSV, made just to illustrate "hypothesis generation". Much sparser than the NREVSS, and utterly limited to symptoms, not diagnostic codes. Too sparse for age subgroups. I hope you're a little entertained by my editorial comments defending NHAMCS, the anti-billing codes organization.
Pitts SR. Ann EM 2013;62(5):540-542.
Nice! Thanks.