Doctor warns about social media’s ‘milk crate challenge’
Dr. Ben Saldana thought he’d seen all the ways people were disregarding medical advice and taking part in risky behavior.
As a resurgent coronavirus has crowded the 18 emergency care centers that Saldana oversees for Houston Methodist, he’d heard of COVID-19 patients taking ineffectual anti-bacterial medications or the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, used as a horse dewormer. Other patients had simply refused local public health officials’ pleas to wear masks or be vaccinated before they showed up in need of urgent care.
But a third category of viral risk-taking surfaced after TikTok and other social media platforms erupted Wednesday with videos of the “milk crate challenge,” in which people stack plastic crates into a pyramid and try to climb the unstable structures like stairs.
Saldana, who does not have a TikTok account, said nurses told him about the trend late Wednesday. While viewers may find the inevitable falls entertaining, they can lead to ugly injuries, he said.
“If someone fell from seven crates, lots of things could happen,” he said. A hard fall onto a crate could lacerate an eye or the side of a head. Broken bones, a brain bleed, concussions, and spinal injuries could also happen depending on the surface underneath, he said.
Life- or organ-threatening injuries would be treated as emergencies, said Saldana.
As Houston’s hospitals and emergency care facilities swell to capacity with COVID-19 patients, however, those who bring routine injuries upon themselves, such as by falling from a lower height or while standing, will likely have to wait.
“People fracture wrists all day long doing stuff like that — easy to splint, but obviously painful,” he said. “It’s pretty quick normally, but I can promise you given the current saturation, it’ll take longer to get that splinted.”
How much longer to get such procedures done changes by the hour as hospitals struggle to make room for patients in need of life-saving operations. Saldana said major hospitals in the Texas Medical Center are filled with patients with COVID-19 or cancer or who’ve had organ transplants.
Local emergency facilities in communities across Houston, some of which have temporarily
closed in recent weeks to move their staff to overburdened hospitals, would likely handle any injuries from the challenge, Saldana said. He added that he isn’t aware of any cases at Houston Methodist.
Still, Saldana said many health care workers are frustrated that social media has helped spread messages that encourage people to disregard medical advice or take unnecessary risks, including misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and purported treatments.
TikTok, which has a rule against promoting “dangerous acts,” has banned the challenge from its app and is trying to remove videos, though many live on in other social media platforms.
Saldana thinks those who ignore medical advice are also drawn to memes like the milk crate challenge that are all about risk.
“It really speaks to that age in the 20s and 30s — the exact same population we’re finding in this fourth surge infected with COVID,” he said. “People aren’t heeding the advice of what seems to be obvious — they’re not masking, not vaccinating. So, it makes sense that same population would do something silly.”