Medical experts are warning that the country could face a "syndemic" as the weather cools and cases of COVID-19, the flu and RSV begin to rise.
According to the National Library of Medicine, syndemics are stitched together by three rules: two or more diseases cluster together in time or space; these diseases interact in meaningful ways, whether social, psychological, or biological; and harmful social conditions drive these interactions.
With COVID numbers increasing and surges of the flu and RSV being reported across the country, some experts fear the United States is a "sitting duck" when it comes to the threat of a syndemic this winter.
"Strained hospital capacities, workforce exhaustion, burnout, a lack of effective therapeutic tools, poor communication, a lack of compliance [with COVID-19 precautions], a lack of continuity planning, and the pervasive influence of social determinants of health" makes the country's health care infrastructure even more fragile, Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Arkansas, told Fortune.
COVID hospitalizations are up 10% week over week, RSV hospitalizations are the highest they've been since 2020, and flu hospitalizations are at their highest since 2017, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As for why more people seem to be getting sick, some experts point to the immunity debt theory, which suggests that people became more susceptible to infection due to the lack of immune stimulation by viruses during the pandemic.
"Last year really showed what happens when we go a few years without seeing our normal viral trends," Dr. Karen Acker, pediatric infectious diseases specialist at New York–Presbyterian Komansky Children's Hospital, told Fortune.
"It may take some time for viral levels and the immunity dynamic to level out," Acker added. "This may be another bad year."
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