Already by the last week of October 2022, continuing through November and early December, local Rhode Island media were amplifying clinician and public health official warnings about a paediatric respiratory illness ‘tripledemic’. The ‘tripledemic’ that prompted this tocsin of looming calamity in children was an alleged convergence of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Serious paediatric illness is best gauged by the actual number of children hospitalised, as opposed to ‘respiratory virus test positivity’. The latter is especially misleading because of the unique, ongoing phenomenon of continued mass COVID-19 testing for minimal symptoms. Curiously, almost two months later, I could find no local media follow-up coverage elucidating the feared paediatric ‘tripledemic’ by this most germane metric: a direct comparison of children hospitalised for COVID-19, influenza or RSV.
With the cooperation of Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) spokesman Joseph Wendelken, and an academic paediatrician at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, I can now present those hospitalisation data, per the table below. Given time lags in compilation and transmission, the hospitalisation record only covers all of October, and November 2022.
Despite the anguished media declarations, there was no Rhode Island paediatric ‘tripledemic’, at least through October and November. RSV, alone, accounted for around 90% (194 ÷ 222 = 87.4%) of so-called ‘tripledemic’ hospitalisations among Rhode Island children, and the rate of RSV hospitalisations (97 per month), was around seven-fold the rate of COVID-19 and influenza hospitalisations combined (14 per month). Moreover, the surrogate for RSV hospitalisations, a single International Classification of Diseases (ICD) RSV code (bronchiolitis, an inflammation of the smaller lung airways) omits RSV pneumonia and bronchitis coded hospitalisations. Certainly, omitting these ICD codes underestimates true paediatric RSV admissions.
The rate of primary (or ‘suspected‘ primary) COVID-19 pediatric hospitalisations mirrored what I discovered about the receding ‘Omicron wave’ from February to early June 2022. After weeks of wrangling, requiring an Access to Public Records Act submission to the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH), supported by two state legislators, my query on paediatric COVID-19 hospitalisations in the first half of 2022 was answered on August 5th 2022. These data revealed that during the 16-week period from February 13th 2022 through June 4th 2022 there were a total of only 15 primary COVID-19 paediatric hospitalisations (for ages 0 to 17 years-old), as determined by RIDOH criteria. Notwithstanding this clinically insignificant, low ebb trickle of COVID-19 paediatric hospitalisations, RIDOH issued two memos recommending Rhode Island public schools re-institute compulsory masking (see RIDOH memos dated May 19th 2022 and May 20th 2022) for all school children in so-called “high COVID-19 transmission” districts.
Present ‘tripledemic’ nonoccurrence aside, the overwhelmingly RSV-driven rate of increased paediatric respiratory illness hospitalisations in Rhode Island during October and November should decline significantly in December and January as RSV infection rates peaked in early November and declined precipitously through early December (see data from RIDOH, plotted below).
Additional reassuring national data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate the early influenza spike this year may be peaking in the U.S. overall as well, albeit not yet in New England. The third leg of the non-‘tripledemic’, COVID-19 paediatric infections, are not spiking in Rhode Island above rates observed since the summer and early autumn, while primary COVID-19 hospitalisation rates in children (see earlier table) remain exceedingly low.
Predictably, those Rhode Island medical thought leaders ginning up unwarranted concerns about the ‘tripledemic’ are once again, ad nauseum, pushing non-evidence-based masking and vaccination in children.
They ignore uniformly negative randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on community masking for the prevention of either influenza (12 RCTs; 10 here; also here and here) or COVID-19 (two RCTs; here, here), complemented by a small RCT in healthcare workers which demonstrated masks also failed to prevent RSV. While acknowledging the absence of a viable vaccine for RSV (but failing to mention the catastrophic failure of historical RSV ‘immunisation’), such thought leaders also ignore the absence of RCT data demonstrating either influenza or COVID-19 vaccines prevent hospitalisation from these respiratory illnesses in children.
The high rate of paediatric RSV hospitalisations alone in October-November should not be shrilly exploited by the media or so-called medical authorities to make counterfactual claims of an RSV, COVID-19 and influenza ‘tripledemic’. Instead, RSV, and now influenza, far more than COVID-19, should be accepted for what they are, i.e., part of the natural cycle of paediatric respiratory infections, and treated calmly, and with caring.
Dr. Andrew Bostom is a physician currently affiliated with the Brown University Center for Primary Care and Prevention, and was an Associate Professor of Medicine and Family Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University from 1997 until June 2021. As a clinical trialist and epidemiologist he designed and completed the largest randomised controlled trial conducted in chronic kidney transplant recipients.
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Two new studies show mRNA-jabbed people have a much higher risk of getting Covid than unvaccinated people… and those who have received mRNA Covid vaccines are at least twice as likely to be infected with the coronavirus as unvaccinated people, according to two new papers from researchers in Indiana and Ohio.
Worse, the newer of the two studies, which covered Omicron this autumn, found risk actually rises with the number of shots. had received three or more shots were more than three times as likely to be infected as those who hadn’t received any!
Very “safe” and “effective” for Pfizer´s bank account ….
With the bonus of being immune to liability; what’s not to like? Money talks, in the drug trade.
Kinda ironic that in an article about scaremongering, you are banging on about Omicron ‘infections’. Who cares how many people
catchtest positive for a cold?It’s been the biggest Crime against Humanity ever seen and yet no one is being prosecuted.
100% agree and sadly it continues.
Whilst there is some hope of an increasing realisation amongst the sheep I can’t see the MSM/government reporting honestly unless the increase in deaths/illness accelerates to such a degree that even those bastards can’t continue to ignore it.
Indeed. The only people we (filthy unjabbed clean bloods) know getting Covid are those who have had the jab.
It always gladdens my heart and gives me cause for optimism when i see that there are professionals prepared to subject the frequent public health panics to the evidence. Not “the science” which is now a byword for manipulative fear casting and a cloak for control and authoritarianism. . Thanks Andrew and the many others who are ripping the clothes off of the public health emperors.
Tripledemic… lies, lies & more lies.
Business as usual then.
Dr Mercola’s take on the increase in RSV in children with suggestions of how to support children’s health.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-lockdowns-kids-gut-microbiomes-cola/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/12/joseph-mercola/bill-gates-plans-for-new-catastrophic-contagion/
“…Now, the Catastrophic Contagion exercise predicts SEERS-25 will kill 20 million people worldwide, including 15 million children, and many who survive the infection will be left with paralysis and/or brain damage. In other words, the “cue” given is that the next pandemic will likely target children rather than the elderly, as was the case with COVID-19.
This is an interesting coincidence, seeing how rates of toddlers and young children hospitalized with influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is already spiking.
COVID Jabs Are Destroying People’s Immune Systems
Coincidentally, over the past year, researchers have been warning that the COVID jabs may be dysregulating and destroying people’s immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to all sorts of infections.
According to a study9 posted on the preprint server medRxiv in May 2021, the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID jab “reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses, causing immune depletion.”
In August 2021, a French group of pediatric infectious disease experts also warned that “immunity debt” caused by a lack of exposure to common viruses and bacteria during COVID lockdowns and school closures might predispose children to suffer more infections in the future.10
They predicted the decrease in viral and bacterial exposure that train your child’s immune system may result in a rebound of a variety of infectious diseases, including influenza and RSV) which is precisely what we’re now seeing. If a modified enterovirus gets added into the mix, it’s not difficult to see how parents might get spooked enough to start lining their kids up for more shots — including parents in African nations…”