The clunky word “tripledemic” is now on many lips. It means we now face a winter with three different respiratory viruses with similar symptoms are spreading rapidly, and stressing hospital capacity.
Public health is not rocket science. The best way to frustrate the tiny danger is for people to mask in public and, whenever possible, to get shots to protect themselves.
The first virus sending people to the ER and ICU is our now familiar foe COVID-19 — which on the cusp of 2023, despite having become less virulent as it has evolved, is still killing more than 450 Americans per day. The second is the perennial scourge called influenza, for which hospitalizations are spiking. The third is RSV, a pathogen that, while no fun to catch no matter how old you are, is especially hard on infants.
