>St. Christopher’s sits in the bull’s-eye of what pediatricians are calling a “tridemic,” as RSV, flu, and COVID-19 strike all at once. All across the country, children’s hospitals are overwhelmed from an unusually early and severe onslaught of seasonal respiratory viruses.
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>In this swath of Philadelphia — the nation’s poorest large city — chronic disease and poverty have further aggravated the crisis. The neighborhood surrounding the hospital at Erie Avenue and Front Street has the city’s highest rate of childhood asthma. More than 90% of life-threatening asthma attacks in children are triggered by respiratory viruses, according to Reingold, chair of the hospital’s department of emergency medicine.
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When virus and asthma collide, the resulting cyclone of respiratory distress can quickly lead to a hospital emergency for a kid who lives near St. Christopher’s.
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>ER veterans at St. Christopher’s have never seen anything like these last few months. And they fear the worst may be yet to come as the region heads into a winter where few people are still masking. Young children are now getting exposed to viruses for the first time.

>In recent days, the ER has reached 100 kids waiting to be seen.

Jesus. Those poor kids. I feel for these parents.

Friend of mine is a pediatric resident at St. Chris’s, and shit was already bad more than a month ago — her exact quote back on November 2(!) was, “The hospital is bursting at the seams.” PICU/NICU were jammed even then, and they had to intubate some babies.

Apparently RSV cases were double the December 2019 peak at that point, and it sure as hell hasn’t gotten any better in the meantime.

It's not just north Philly. Jefferson Torresdale is just as bad. The ER wait is 12 hours. Look up the reviews on Google for a read on how bad it is.

A bunch of local parents I know throughout the region who have kids of various ages with pre-existing upper respiratory conditions and therefore go to CHOP for all of their annual well-checks have been talking about their upcoming appointments (for at least the next month or two) being recently cancelled en masse via email blast. I’m guessing they were cancelled not just because of a lack of space/current overcrowding, but because nobody wants to risk acutely healthy kids coming into doctors offices and hospitals and picking up something while there. A lot of these appointments were made MONTHS or even a year in advance so rescheduling to be seen soon by their specific pediatrician or specialist isn’t gonna happen. And the same medical shit show is happening simultaneously all over the country.

"But what can we do," asked society, while sitting in a packed indoor space like there's not 3 viruses raging simultaneously.

heartbreaking

I bounce back and forth between here and Canada and it’s really bad up there. Just, generally, as a policy have less ICU beds per capita. During the pandemic lots of doctors and nurses quit. (Province limited nurse raise to 1%). So lots of hospitals are closing ERs due to staff shortages.

8-12 hour ER waits for kids are the norm, with many of our friends waiting 20+ hours. They tell you to bring blankets and food as you’ll literally be camping there.

It seems like every hospital is at 150% capacity and some kids are getting transferred to hospitals 2-5 hour drive away.

This “tridemic* of flu/Covid/RSV is really breaking health care systems all over. It’s bad.

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💔💔💔

For anyone wondering why communities of color have higher rates if violence, here’s why. Imagine being a parent, who never graduated high school. You’ve got 3 kids and they are constantly having health issues, which because of your low paying job with zero benefits, you have neither the PTO nor the assets to address. The stability of your life is constantly on the edge of a knife.

Now apply that to thousands of families in an incredibly dense area and tell me it’s a healthy living situation.