Why is this viral season so wild?
I’m tired, folks.
Tired of endless, recurrent viral infections, sleepless nights, and the constant health anxiety.
Who else feels this way? And have you been wondering if it is ever going to end? I jotted down some thoughts.
It feels endless.
Cold after cold, fever after fever. Non stop, without any real break for a parent to recover. It feels endless, and its easy to worry about whether or not things will always be this way.
Obviously, I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what future viral seasons will look like. Viruses frequently mutate unpredictably - which means making predictions is challenging.
With that said, I do think future seasons will be better. There are a few things that are especially true this year.
A mix of factors
We opened things up as a society right as the weather got cooler, school began, and respiratory season began. The appetite for masking and staying home is not there any more.
The thing is, all those measures work not just against CVD but also against other viruses.
After the past 2 years, we all want a normal school year & holiday season. And there is nothing wrong with wanting that, but it means that not every one is being as smart or as careful or as community-centered as they should be in their thinking.
Respiratory season is always tough
Respiratory season sucks. The last “normal” one we had was three years ago. Many pandemic parents have never experienced a normal one, and it is the youngest kids that often struggle the most with illness.
So for many parents this feels entirely new and entirely brutal. And things like this are always brutal when you have a young baby.
Of course, the headlines and fear-mongering don't help.
First exposures don’t help
When the human immune system is first exposed to an illness, the first illness is often most severe. That is when our body is learning how to defend itself against that illness.
Take RSV. In a normal year, most kids under 2 would be the only ones being exposed for the FIRST time.
This year we have kids under 4 seeing it for the first time. The severe cases are still mainly in the youngest (or those with comorbid conditions), which was always true.
So there are more people being exposed. AND when you have more people with something, they expose a wider selection of other people too.
The rate of spread is much higher than normal. It may also be true that there was less conferred immunity through the placenta because fewer pregnant mothers were exposed over the past 2 years.
And then there’s the health anxiety
Our health anxiety is at an all-time high.
We aren’t used to our kids being sick. We are also primed to be extra anxious about even mild illnesses, as a sort of post-traumatic reaction to the past two years.
This means our emotional reactivity to every sniffle... every cough... every fever... is heightened.
So, as a parent, what does one do about all of this?
So what does a parent do?
Take a DEEP BREATH.
Remember that getting sick is a part of childhood and most kids do okay.
The headlines and social media are telling you about full hospitals, overwhelmed doctors, and high infection rates. This is all true, but it is also only a small part of the truth. The people most likely to post and share are the ones for whom the rare things happened.
Most children have viral infections and recover without incident.
It sucks, I know it sucks. I am there with you in the trenches. In the past month we have had pinkeye, croup, and some undiagnosed viral thing that led to days and days of misery and no sleep (and a lingering cough…).
But you are not doing anything wrong.
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