Does it feel like we are sicker than usual this fall? In my house: yes. But does this show up in the data? In today’s newsletter, we use data from the CDC, pediatric hospitals, and Google Trends to try to answer this question. As you can see in these graphs, which show the trends in Google search terms over time, the disease burden at the moment is very high. It's not necessarily more cases of non-COVID illness than in previous years, but it seems to be stacked in a way that is exacerbating everything. We're getting RSV early and it's overlapping with croup. The result is more illness at a given moment. The one piece of good news I do see here is that hand, foot, and mouth disease searches seem to be leveling off. My main conclusion: Hang in there and get the flu shot. You don't need the flu also. Link in bio to the newsletter. Sources: 📈 Google Trends (2017-2022) — “RSV,” “hand, foot, and mouth," “croup," "child fever," "child cough"