US health officials announced Friday that the 2022-2023 flu season had already crossed its epidemic threshold, with cases, hospitalizations and deaths nearly doubling compared to the previous week. The current outbreak of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and multiple highly immunoevasive sub-variants of Omicron that are now dominant only add to the strain becoming a serious health crisis across the country.
Many health systems, particularly children’s hospitals, have reached or exceed capacity. California’s Orange County declared a health emergency on October 31 as a result of a record number of pediatric hospitalizations and flooded emergency rooms. Currently, about 75 percent of children’s hospital beds in the country are occupied.
Dr. Anita Patel, a critical care physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington DC, said Fortunelast week: “I can honestly say that unfortunately with RSV and the flu, we’ve had children who needed to be intubated or have breathing tubes to help them get through the viral illness. I’ve been practicing ICU [intensive care unit] doctor for a decade now, and I think I can safely say this is one of the worst surges I’ve ever seen.”
Federal health officials are outlining plans to deploy federal troops and FEMA personnel to severely affected areas across the country in response to health systems reaching capacity to handle the influx of sick people. These discussions also include the mobilization of resources, such as ventilators, to the most affected regions. Yet these crisis measures are barely mentioned in the mainstream press, insensitive to the mass suffering and death that has characterized these last three years.
The number of jurisdictions reporting high or very high levels of influenza-like illness (ILI) activity has increased in the Mid-Atlantic and South-Central West Coast regions. The District of Columbia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Kentucky have been designated purple, signifying the highest level of ILI activity, for the week ending October 29, 2022.
Dr. José Romero, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) briefing on Friday: “We are seeing the highest rates of hospitalization for influenza since a decade ago. We also reported the second flu-related pediatric death of the season.”
The 2022-2023 flu season, officially launched in the first week of October, is gaining incredible momentum right from the start. Test positivity rates reported to the CDC by US clinical laboratories increased from 1 percent in mid-September to 9 percent in late October and continue to rise.
Romero added, “In the southeastern United States, nearly 20 percent of respiratory specimens are positive for influenza viruses, primarily influenza A and H3 N2 viruses, which have been associated with influenza in the past. more severe seasons, especially for young children and older people.”
Based on historical baseline data, visits to health care providers for upper respiratory infections and ILI at this point in the fall and winter months typically account for no more than 2 percent of all complaints. They currently account for more than 4.3 percent of all doctor visits, more than double the average rate.
Putting this into context, the 4.3 percent figure is typical of spikes seen during a moderate flu season in January and February. During severe flu seasons such as those experienced in 2002-2004, 2009-2010, 2017-2018, and 2019-2020, peak ILI visits never exceeded 8 percent. This implies that the scale of the current flu season is probably unprecedented in recent memory.
As of the week ending October 29, 2022 (week 43), 1.6 million cumulative illnesses were reported. The CDC said in its US Weekly Influenza Surveillance Report (FluView) that there were 13,000 hospitalizations, with 4,326 admitted in the last week. The cumulative rate of hospitalization per capita already reaches 3 per 100,000, which is considerable given that the country has only concluded the first month of the flu season.
To put these numbers into perspective, federal officials have developed Intensity Threshold (IT) values to contextualize the respiratory illness outbreak. These are values, calculated based on historical data, that are used to assess whether a system will meet certain critical thresholds. These values can inform emergency preparedness and response. For example, TI values are used by the US Geological Survey and the National Flood Insurance Program to inform regions of potential flood risks.
For influenza-like illnesses (ILI), the historical average reference for hospitalizations, also known as the IT50 for hospitalizations per 100,000 people, is 8.6. In other words, over 17 flu seasons, hospitalization rates infrequently exceeded the IT50 of 8.6 and only for a short period of the season.
There have also been 732 deaths so far, with two pediatric deaths attributed to influenza. This was the approximate total sustained mortality figure during the 2020-2021 flu season, when mitigation measures were put in place to control the spread of COVID, leading to the near elimination of the flu. With the end of all pandemic mitigation and social distancing, the flu has returned with a proverbial vengeance.
Case, hospitalization and death rates are outpacing the 2017-2018 season, a particularly harsh season that killed more than 52,000 adults and 186 children. Those who did not receive their vaccinations died at significantly higher rates, with people over the age of 65 accounting for nearly 60 percent of all deaths.
However, given the impact of previous COVID infections on the health and immunity of the population after three years of the relentless “let it go” policy, the effect of influenza may be much more severe. These early figures point to a tough flu season in conditions where there has been a mass exodus of healthcare workers and the healthcare infrastructure in the US is under tremendous pressure.
The attempt to cover up the responsibility of policy makers in relation to the respiratory disease epidemic through the pseudoscientific term “immunity debt”, which raises the notion that lack of previous exposure to these viruses has made the population susceptible, it has no foundation in fact or science.
The underlying premise, that it is exposure to these pathogens that confers health, is absurd. These politically motivated ideas do not take into account recent experiences in which the number of influenza cases fell to historic lows. The normalization of death and disease, driven by the prioritization of profit over lives, is exacerbating the evolution of the flu epidemic in the US.
As immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi recently wrote: “We must not delude ourselves into thinking that infections confer a benefit or are a debt that must be repaid. They are more like a tax that we make on children. [and everyone else] pay for our civilization not developing enough to prevent viral diseases that hospitalize thousands of children.
Colin Furness, an epidemiologist and assistant professor of information at the University of Toronto, speaking about mass student absences in Edmonton public schools, said: “We have mounting evidence that, like measles, COVID-19 limps the immune system. It impairs the immune system, which means that after COVID wears off, you are more susceptible to other types of infections, and that may well be a bigger problem in children. So we’re seeing a lot of respiratory diseases, a lot more that could be explained in another way.”