Clogging and your airways get clogged when you are tiny and you turn blue and have problems breathing. that s an issue with rsv. flu knocks you out. we re seeing it now with fatigue and body aches. you can t get out of bed. that s flu. with covid i m seeing a lot of sore throats with this sub variant. very strong sore throat and headache and body aches. that s how i distinguish it if i get the phone call. the reason we re seeing so much rsv out of season is people weren t exposed to it because of the closures and shut downs. the immune system wasn t ready for it. it was on pause. it takes a couple of days for the immune system to come back. we ll come out of this. i recommend vaccines, i recommend the flu vaccine. a good match this year and covid vaccines. rsv you need to get to early treatment. gillian: we know we can take your advice to the bank.
About increasing cases of respiratory virus affecting children. pediatric wards are filling up across the country. and this morning white house covid response coordinator dr. jha says early intervention is key. > if your kid has problems breathing, get them seen early to avoid things getting worse. joining us now is kelly o donnell. and also a doctor who is an msnbc contributor. reporter: and part of this is the chance for the president to demonstrate a shot like this is quick, painless and widely available. so that is part of the mission of him doing it in a public way. he will be joined by some of the officials from retailers where people can get it done, think
And so if your child is having problems breathing, they re breathing too fast or struggling too much, or they re wheezing, that is the time you need to reach out to your physician for him or her to be seen. and so look, some people wait, especially when you have a small baby, people are exhausted, right? they re trying to make that decision, there s colds, colds, going to the doctor, and why is this so different and why is it so essential that they don t wait? you know, rsv is one of what we ll call the big three of the viruses, certainly we know all about covid, we certainly know about influenza, but rsv again is known by every pediatrician because it fills up our hospitals every year. usually, it fills up our hospitals in the winter. now, it s more of a summer and this is something that we dealt with, and we see how much these infants really struggle. or children who have lung problems, like asthma, or who have heart problems, or immune
Problems, all of them can get sick or very sick, at any age. but certainly any child without those can get sick if they re very, very young. if they re having a difficulty breathing, they are coughing, so much that they can t eat or drink, then they re going to get dehydrate and then everything is going to snowball right after that. when they re having problems breathing, when they re having problems eating, you really need to be seen as soon as you can. is there anything you can do for children to kind of prevent getting to that severe point? certainly, we talk about washing our hands and we ve been doing this with the holy trinity of washing hands, masking, and social distancing, that we ve been doing over the last two and a half years. that certainly works against rsv as well. that s one of the reasons why we saw such a dip in rsv over the last two years is because everybody has been doing so good with hand hygiene, people have been wearing masks and people have not been sick wh
There. janice: it is a different beast, they are so erratic and out of control. we ve had an incredible year already 1.9 million acres burned, of course watching one fire across california, but the northwest is on fire, look at all these incredible flames burning across the northwest in toward the rockies. air quality very poor in some regions, if you have problems breathing, this is not good news, that smoke will continue to move north and east, along the jet stream, the winds are helping to push toward the northern plains and that pattern has set up and will bring heavy rainfall to parts of the midwest and great lakes areas that don t need to see it, rather see this rain moving toward the wildfire danger, the midwest in line for several inches of rain today through friday. we ll keep you up to date and looking at rain in the forecast