Famous golfer Tiger Woods couldn't complete the second round of a golf tournament this weekend due to influenza. Two questions came to my mind immediately, still not answered. But, we have a lot more than golf to discuss this week.
WRIS
I suspect we are a matter of weeks away before I can retire Winter Respiratory Infection Season as a weekly feature. RSV is much less of a factor now, and I won't be discussing much about RSV unless things change.
Influenza-like illness continues to fluctuate regionally, we're really seeing wide variations. I'll mention again that this tracking method will pick up not just influenza, but also other respiratory illnesses. However, pre-pandemic it was a pretty reliable gauge of influenza activity. I do note that Mr. Woods lives in Florida and the golf tournament is in California. He became ill Thursday night, so using the common incubation period for flu of 2-3 days he could have acquired this in California (if he was practicing there a few days before); however, the outer range for flu incubation period is 7 days, so all bets are off about where he met his virus. (Also, I'm not stalking him, I have no idea about his travel history.)
At this stage of flu season, it's worth a look at pediatric mortality numbers. It's a little less than, but similar to, last year. Also note there is a significant lag time in reporting and verifying influenza deaths, so some of these bars in previous weeks will rise.
Pediatric deaths continue to occur slightly more commonly in children without underlying medical conditions, and the 5-11 year age group is the most common. Unfortunately, no data for vaccine status is provided.
What about the covid scene? As usual, I'm still looking at wastewater data because the methodology for collecting and reporting this information hasn't changed as much as have the methods for reporting infections and deaths among the states.
Again, this is at most a qualitative descriptor, but nothing to suggest a new surge approaching. Wastewater activity is highest in the South.
I wish CDC would publish numbers of covid pediatric deaths like they do for influenza. They only report death rates per 100,000 by age, and of course they are very low for the pediatric population. The absolute numbers are somewhere in there, but on the CDC website it would require me to write my own search language in their database, and I'm too lazy to spend the time to figure that out.
I also took a look at CDC's covid vaccine rates by age, especially since they now have updated information regarding the fall XBB vaccine dose. It's pretty grim.
Note that the highest rate is only 13.4%, and when I dug down into more details, all the states except one were in single digits for pediatric populations receiving the updated vaccine. The best and only double-digit rate was Vermont at a dismal 13.4%.
On the other hand, one could argue that because rates of serious pediatric disease with covid are so low it isn't cost-effective to vaccinate children who do not have risk factors. In fact, that's what most countries have decided; the US is an outlier in offering covid vaccine to healthy children. Nonetheless, on an individual basis every child is better off being vaccinated than not, even given the low risk of death, long covid, MIS-C, etc.
Back in the somewhat good news arena, a recent article gave an overview of planning (and funding!) for research on better covid vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and antiviral drugs that will not be subject to loss of effectiveness with new variants. It's called Project NexGen.
Lastly on the covid front, many of you probably heard about CDC plans to change isolation guidelines for the public to be more in line with what we do for flu and other respiratory viruses. So far it is just a draft, but it's targeted for release in April. It's not really based on any new findings about transmission rates or duration of infectivity, but rather I think an attempt at simplicity with the recognition that current guidelines aren't being followed by the majority of the public anyway. What I think is most important, and I hope the final guidelines will stress, is that guidelines should differ depending on the situation. For example, it's a very different calculus for children attending school than it is for those same children going to visit their 85-year-old grandma. The public needs to understand that different risks occur in different circumstances.
Measles
Hot off the presses, 4 children in a single elementary school in Florida developed measles. So far not much official from the Broward County health department, but I'm betting that none of them were fully immunized. Watch out for a large number of secondary cases in the coming weeks.
Changes in Prophylaxis for Meningococcal Disease
This was news from the previous week that I'm just mentioning now. Ciprofloxacin has been used for prophylaxis of meningococcal disease for several years, but recently some sectors are now seeing resistance to quinolones. So, if you are considering prophylaxis of a close contact of someone with meningococcal disease, you will need to contact your local health department immediately to see if the resistance rate meets criteria for choosing an alternative agent such as rifampin, ceftriaxone, or azithromycin.
Tiger's Third Degree
I look at everything through an infectious diseases eye, whether I'm walking down the street, reading the paper, or chasing squirrels from the bird feeder; I just can't stop myself. So, I have 2 questions for Tiger.
- Did you get a flu vaccine this year? I'm not a betting man, and I've already made one bet in this blog, but I'd guess not. He had fever and other symptoms the night before his Friday golf round, and then Friday morning still had fever and other symptoms but tried to play the round, making it through a few holes before feeling faint and ending up with IV rehydration therapy according to his official statement.
- And to follow up on the above thought, what were you thinking trying to play the round on Friday? Not only did you not meet any school or workplace criteria for participating, you exposed everyone close to you to influenza presumably without notifying them. Of course, this is the sort of "tough it out" mentality that I've been guilty of myself in the past, at least to the point of working when I had a mild cold because I thought myself too essential for my workplace or didn't want to shoulder my colleagues with covering me. I don't think Tiger needed the money for playing in the tournament, but he also was the host of this particular event and I'm sure many fans turned out primarily because he was playing, so that's a bit more pressure than in my workplace. Still, isn't it time we made a change in our behavior when we're sick? Take a moment to think about the impact your actions have on others.
Which brings me to a third question for Mr. Woods: Would you at least make a statement recognizing that you should not have tried to play on Friday, and also give a plug for flu vaccine even if you didn't receive one this year?
I'd bet big bucks that Tiger Woods doesn't read this blog, so, yes, I'm just blowing off steam.
Next week is the regular meeting of the ACIP, I"m hoping to view most of the 2-day meeting and have this be the focus of next week's blog.