Op-Ed: RSV is packing hospitals with sick kids, but it can be contained
The New York Times’s new video, “Why the Trump Plan Could Bring a Long Wave of Illness and Death on Children,” lays out what has been going on in Washington and around the country with the government shutdown and the impending threat of a government shutdown that would bring yet another crisis, as America’s children grapple with an untreatable, incurable viral disease.
While it details the horrific conditions children are being subjected to, the video also reminds us that the government is working with us to fix the problem.
It also reminds us that the President did not shut the government down. Rather, he asked for a short extension to give us time to find a solution for our children. He got his way, and now we have a plan — just like he promised.
The good news is that this plan will put the medical community on the front lines of the fight against this disease, and it will hopefully bring down the number of cases of this illness by the end of 2018.
This crisis has been brewing for decades. We’ve all heard of the devastating effects of vaccine reactions — from the devastating loss of a child who had polio, to the fact that our children are dying from this disease that has been around for decades. The medical community has been fighting to get this problem fixed, whether it’s the cause, or the cure.
All of this is making our president’s plan a little easier to bear, but this is nothing compared to the suffering that will be brought on this new wave of the disease as children across the country are infected by a new strain — now in our schools, our hospitals, our playgrounds, and in our streets.
The truth is, we have to do something about this problem before it’s too late.
So why are we talking about this now, and why are we talking about it now, not sooner? Well, the truth is that the Trump administration is fighting not only for the lives