PSA: PLEASE MASK AGAIN.
If you stopped masking, it’s time to start again, today. I’m not asking you to stay home, just to mask as well as possible, and do hand hygiene.
In multiple communities all over the USA and Canada, every pediatric hospital bed is full, mostly with babies and toddlers who have severe respiratory infections. It seems to be a combination of flu, RSV and COVID, sometimes more than one at a time in the same child.
We can sort out why this happened later. Right now, there’s an emergency that should be front page news, and isn’t, and the best way to stop it is to reduce the circulation of all respiratory viruses in our communities by masking everyone who can mask, before babies start dying because there isn’t enough care to go around.
Get your current flu shot and bivalent COVID booster if you haven’t already, but also please mask now.
Please do it for the babies! Nov 15, 2022.
The hospital my friend works at has been filling up with pediatric cases with a worrying amount of “airborne and droplet precaution” cases because of this flu and COVID uptick.
Mask up, stop the spread.
If you stopped masking, this is your sign to start again. Please.
I have two different friends who have had to take their toddlers into crowded hospitals and wait hours for emergency beds and oxygen this month (November 2022). There is a nation-wide shortage (Canada) of amoxicillin, which I understand is the drug of choice to treat kids with respiratory infections, because of the sudden spike in cases. Please mask up and help slow down the spread so that doctors and nurses have a fighting chance to treat kids!
Experts are concerned Thanksgiving gatherings could accelerate a ‘tripledemic’ via NPR, published 11/22/2022.
