Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at

jhh.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today I talk to Dr. Mike Rose, a pediatric resident at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,

about the recent surge in

respiratory hospitalizations and kids. We talk about a concept called immunity debt, which could

explain why we are seeing so much illness now, after years of masking and distancing to stay as

healthy as possible during the COVID pandemic. Let's listen. Mike Rose, thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, excited to be on the podcast.

So you are a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins Hospital,

and I wanted to ask you what things look like right now

in terms of respiratory illnesses. Thankfully, I would say things look like right now in terms of respiratory illnesses.

Thankfully, I would say things look much better now than they did two months ago.

We had a tremendous surge with RSV, was quickly followed by a really big surge of influenza.

RSV has certainly abated. Flu is starting to slow up a little bit.

Now we're starting to see COVID climb a post-holiday period here. Overall, it's been a tremendously

busy fall and early winter, but things are in a much better place today than two months ago or so.

So why did this happen? Why have you seen so many sick children you typically would see?

That's a great question. I think the most likely reason, because it fits most with our understanding

of viral illnesses and makes a lot of sense with what's been going on

...