The Mainstream media is hard selling the “tripledemic”

https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-12-11/a-tripledemic-is-overwhelming-emergency-departments-and-the-healthcare-workers-that-staff-them?mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Today is the fun task of reading this NPR post.  The headlines are screaming murder, “The tripledemic is here and we are nervous for the future”.

Ok so first off, there is no such thing as a tripledemic.  It is flu season.  It is respiratory virus season.  Covid is the virus that has not left in 3 years.  There is nothing tripledemic, it’s literally THE time of the year when people are most frequently sick.  December, January, and February.

What this headline that spreads fear does is creates a narrative that people repeat, when they don’t even read the darn article.  So lets gander through the article.

Point 1: Hospitals are 82% full.  That is not capacity.  That isn’t overflowing.  It is actually pretty normal for this time of year, and even a little low.  Running in the 90% and up for census is not abnormal in December.

Point 2: “Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health System, said the hospital has had no choice but to temporarily use hallway beds.”  What they fail to clarify here is that hallway beds means the EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT, not the actual inpatient hospital.  That is buried further down.  They also should have included in this section that the ED at KU is under construction right now, limiting some space as they expand to add 20+ more ED beds.

Point 3:  halfway down the article they say this: “In all, about 10% of the hospital’s beds are taken up by flu, RSV and COVID patients”.  10% of beds TOTAL for the “tripledemic” patients.  That means 90% of beds are used for everything else medical under the sun.

Point 4: at the BOTTOM of the article it discusses the REAL reason hospitals are struggling.  Lack of nursing staff.  Across the metro, there is a 20-24% vacancy rate for nurses right now.  That means 1-4 hospital beds unstaffed for every nurse they are short.  So out of that 82% bed use at KU, how many EMPTY beds sit unstaffed?  I am not sure what bed count is at KU at this point, they keep growing rapidly, but assuming a 2,000 bed hospital as an average, 20% nurse vacancy rate means 100-400 beds could potentially not be used, depending on what unit is short nurses and how many beds those nurses staff on that unit.  It could even be higher if it is med surg beds not staffed.  But THAT is not in the headline of fear of course!!

I dug up some statistics for flu and covid metro wide dated for when this fear journal came out.

Here is the entire 9 county hospitalizations for covid stats:

68 total new hospitalizations.  Across 9 counties. That is average of 7-8 per county.  Not overburdening a hospital system.

Here is flu cases for the week ending Dec 3rd.  So in an entire state, the total flu cases for the state of Missouri is 10,896.  Mind you, this is a state with two metro areas with millions of people.  Also note….who is getting the flu in high numbers?  The young kids and young adults.  Those over age 25 are minimally affected by flu so far based on the week 48 data and the season to date data.  Definitely not overburdening the hospital.

And here is by region.  So week 48 had 2,798 cases in the northwest region (where Kansas City is counted at), and the eastern portion where St. Louis is located had 4,417 cases for week 48.

I already broke down the covid average per hospital admissions above.  RSV does not report to the state health department so I have no data on that. But national RSV levels have peaked and dropped.  Below is a flu breakdown of a worst case scenario, and how the numbers do not add up to a “overburdened hospital crisis”.

There is zero chance that these numbers are all hospitalized, especially given the young age of the majority diagnosed.  The flu is not overburdening hospitals.  I took the liberty to chat with a few nurses and ER staff and they concurred, it isn’t flu and covid getting admitted to the hospital.  Many present to ER feeling like crap, majority are sent home and not admitted.  Admissions are multiple other things.  Which lines up with above in the article that said 10% of cases are admitted to the hospital and the other 90% of admission hospital beds are NOT covid, RSV, or influenza. If we use the 10% guideline for Kansas City alone, assuming that ALL 2,798 influenza cases went to the ER (they definitely didn’t), then that would be 279 cases admitted to the hospital.  That is a worst case scenario.  I cannot even count the total number of hospitals in the NW region of Missouri, but here in Kansas City alone there are at least 13 major hospitals.  With many more to the north.  Even if you divide the worst case scenario 279 flu cases across the 13 METRO hospitals, leaving out every hospital outside of Kansas City metro, that would be roughly 21 admissions per metro hospital.  That is low.  But this is a great example of how they will write an  “if it bleeds it leads” article when it comes to scaring everyone!

The article concluded with this:

Lucas said the easiest way to help healthcare providers facing overcrowded hospitals is to keep yourself healthy. One way to do that, according to Stites, is to get fully vaccinated and boosted for COVID and get the annual flu shot.

“We know nobody wants mask mandates, we know that nobody wants to be forced to get vaccinated,” Stites said. “That's all great until people get really sick and the hospitals get really full. If you think of the (fact) that these new variants are more immune evasive, then having had COVID won't be as protective. I think we're just nervous about what's to come.”  Eye.  Roll.  Shut up.  Is that a thinly veiled threat by ol Doc Stites that if we don’t comply they will try to force masks and vaxxes around here?  That isn’t gonna fly I can guarantee that.