Yes it is. Tuberculosis has infected a very significant fraction of humanity (far more than covid-19), but the disease is usually in a "latent" stage. Basically

Yes it is. Tuberculosis has infected a very significant fraction of humanity (far more than covid-19), but the disease is usually in a "latent" stage. Basically it enters the lungs, strolls around until a Macrophage attacks it, lets the macrofage attack. Once inside the macrophage it will use the weapon of the macrophage to kill the macrophage instead of itself (the result is called a "granule"). At that point usually it'll go dormant, and slowly eat up the macrophage, not multiplying very fast. This can last for years, even decennia. And then at some point it'll come out and start multiplying again, and after a year or so the host will be dead. Between 1/4th and 1/3rd of humanity has a latent TB infection. Lately TB has become more and more resistant, so the treatments are losing effectiveness (plus treatments only ever "win" by getting the disease back into the latent stage, which only works once for some reason). The vaccine has been losing effectiveness. It still works on kids, it generally does not make adults immune anymore. And even if you're vaccinated, that does not help against latent infection. With a latent infection, weaken the immune system and it'll spring to life ... and kill you (HIV being the big immune weakening culprit here, some Hep in Africa, or just plain cold or very hot weather). Even immune kids can get a latent infection and die from the disease decades later when there's some complication happening (like for instance COVID-19). Under normal circumstances, TB kills between 1.5 and 2 million people worldwide, yearly. That's 2-3 TIMES more than covid will kill, except TB has done this every year, for at least 200 years (maybe more). TB has (slowly) killed a billion humans, minimum. Due to medical care being rationed everywhere TB is expected to kill 30-40% more this year.