{"id":5432,"date":"2023-12-05T18:59:23","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T00:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5432"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:14:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:14:58","slug":"were-living-the-reality-of-the-pandemics-simplest-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/12\/05\/were-living-the-reality-of-the-pandemics-simplest-math\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Living the Reality of the Pandemic\u2019s Simplest Math"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sick season will be worse from now on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last fall, when RSV and flu came roaring back from a prolonged and erratic hiatus, and COVID was still killing thousands of Americans each week<\/a>, many of the United States\u2019 leading infectious-disease experts offered the nation a glimmer of hope. The overwhelm<\/a>, they predicted, was probably temporary<\/a>\u2014viruses making up ground they\u2019d lost during the worst of the pandemic. Next year would be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so far, this year has been better. Some of the most prominent and best-tracked viruses, at least, are behaving less aberrantly than they did the previous autumn. Although neither RSV nor flu is shaping up to be particularly mild this year, says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, both appear to be behaving more within their normal bounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But infections are still nowhere near back to their pre-pandemic norm. They never will be again. Adding another disease\u2014COVID\u2014to winter\u2019s repertoire has meant exactly that: adding another disease, and a pretty horrific one at that, to winter\u2019s repertoire. <\/em>\u201cThe probability that someone gets sick over the course of the winter is now increased,\u201d Rivers told me, \u201cbecause there is yet another germ to encounter.\u201d The math is simple, even mind-numbingly obvious\u2014a pathogenic n+1 that epidemiologists have seen coming since the pandemic\u2019s earliest days. Now we\u2019re living that reality, and its consequences. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve told family or friends is, \u2018Odds are, people are going to get sick this year,\u2019\u201d Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before the pandemic, winter was a dreaded slog\u2014\u201cthe most challenging time for a hospital\u201d in any given year, Popescu said. In typical years, flu hospitalizes an estimated 140,000 to 710,000 people<\/a> in the United States alone; some years, RSV can add on some 200,000 more<\/a>. \u201cOur baseline has never been great,\u201d Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford, told me. \u201cTens of thousands of people die every year.\u201d In \u201clight\u201d seasons, too, the pileup exacts a tax: In addition to weathering the influx of patients, health-care workers themselves fall sick, straining capacity as demand for care rises. And this time of year, on top of RSV, flu, and COVID, we also have to contend with a maelstrom of other airway viruses<\/a>\u2014among them, rhinoviruses, parainfluenza viruses, human metapneumovirus, and common-cold coronaviruses. (A small handful of bacteria can cause nasty respiratory illnesses too.) Illnesses not severe enough to land someone in the hospital could still leave them stuck at home for days or weeks on end, recovering or caring for sick kids\u2014or shuffling back to work, still sick and probably contagious because they can\u2019t afford to take time off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic Sick season will be worse from now on. Last fall, when RSV and flu came roaring back from a prolonged and erratic hiatus, and COVID was still killing thousands of Americans each week, many of the United States\u2019 leading infectious-disease experts offered the nation a glimmer of hope. The overwhelm, they predicted, was probably temporary\u2014viruses making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11748,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5432\/revisions\/11748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}