3 ms·

COVID and tuberculosis are pretty different diseases: active tuberculosis infections kill roughly half of their hosts[1]. People can believe all kinds of pighe

COVID and tuberculosis are pretty different diseases: active tuberculosis infections kill roughly half of their hosts[1]. People can believe all kinds of pigheaded and ignorant things about COVID because, in parts, they (1) either deny it exists or (2) minimize its effects. Tuberculosis denialism or minimalization aren't similarly common, to my knowledge. [1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...

orev 4y ago
The point of that comment is that millions of people actively choose to ignore the entire concept of a health care system and the science underlying disease. Those people simply wouldn’t care about the differences between Covid and other diseases. They’re certainly not going to care about a WHO fact sheet.
- lolinder 4y ago
  Living in a place where the majority of people are COVID skeptics to varying degrees, I can assure you that almost none of them would deny that tuberculosis is deadly. To listen to some of the people here, you would think that it's all-or-nothing: either you believe everything that comes out of the health care system or absolutely none of it. That's not accurate, and treating people that way doesn't help solve the problem.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    Modern civil discourse is depressingly black and white.
    - more_corn 4y ago
      Has it ever been otherwise? Everyone thinks they’ve done their due diligence and arrived at the correct conclusion. The people who disagree are obviously wrong. And maybe they even know it.
      - zdragnar 4y ago
        > Everyone thinks they’ve done their due diligence and arrived at the correct conclusion. I think this is too charitable. So many points of contention have both sides using morality as the justification for their position, and if they are on the side of "what is right" then there's no point even considering the words of the other side, because clearly the others are on the side of "wrong". This is, of course, not an entirely new phenomenon. What is different is that we can communicate more, and faster, than in the past- one might hope that would help us more readily understand each other, but the opposite is proving to be true.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
Disease denial wasn't invented with COVID, it's been around for as long as medical treatment has been, ranging from "I am not sick" to "Sure, I have it, but and I'm fine so your claims about it being a risk are BS" to the flat-out crackpot "germ theory is fake, wake up sheeple". COVID only showed exactly how many people are disappointments.
AlexandrB 4y ago
It might not be common, but denialism of highly-fatal diseases does exist and with pretty tragic consequences: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Maggiore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Maggiore
lazyasciiart 4y ago
There were people in hospitals dying from covid still saying it was all a hoax. https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nurses-are-dealing-with-patients-who-think-covid-is-a-hoax.html https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nurses-are-dealing-with-patie...
- lolinder 4y ago
  There are also a few flat earthers out there. Most COVID skeptics are somewhere in between "deniers at all costs" and "mildly suspicious that the government's recommendations are politically motivated". As in any normal curve, the vast majority are in the latter end of the spectrum and would be very happy to accept that TB is deadly.
amluto 4y ago
Tuberculosis is weird. The CDC estimates that 13M Americans have latent infections. Asymptomatic people are only tested in the US under special circumstances. As far as I know, no widespread surveillance or treatment program exists. And yet the actual burden of disease caused by TB in the US seems quite low. As far as I know, no one really knows why TB is not a major problem in the US. But saying that half of active TB patients is a bit like saying that car accidents kill half of the people who are critically injured by a car accident — it may be true (although I made up that last statistic), but it rather overstates the severity of the underlying problem (TB and car accidents).
- Swizec 4y ago
  > As far as I know, no one really knows why TB is not a major problem in the US Could it be the mandatory vaccination programme? I even had to get a booster as condition for my greencard because it had been 10 years.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    That would be my guess as well. TB vaccination is mandatory for most public schooling in the US, and boosters are common.
    - amluto 4y ago
      Citation needed. The TB vaccine (BCG) is barely used in the US. It is not on the CDC schedule, it’s not routinely given in any school I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t seem to be recommended for US-born people at all. I find it surprising that the US even bothers giving it to green card recipients, given that the US has no particular shortage of people with TB infections that can potentially infect people domestically. And the BCG vaccine isn’t even particularly effective.
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        Yeah, I made a mistake: I thought the T in DTaP was tuberculosis, but it's tetanus.

orev 4y ago

The point of that comment is that millions of people actively choose to ignore the entire concept of a health care system and the science underlying disease. Those people simply wouldn’t care about the differences between Covid and other diseases. They’re certainly not going to care about a WHO fact sheet.

lolinder 4y ago
Living in a place where the majority of people are COVID skeptics to varying degrees, I can assure you that almost none of them would deny that tuberculosis is deadly. To listen to some of the people here, you would think that it's all-or-nothing: either you believe everything that comes out of the health care system or absolutely none of it. That's not accurate, and treating people that way doesn't help solve the problem.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Modern civil discourse is depressingly black and white.
  - more_corn 4y ago
    Has it ever been otherwise? Everyone thinks they’ve done their due diligence and arrived at the correct conclusion. The people who disagree are obviously wrong. And maybe they even know it.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      > Everyone thinks they’ve done their due diligence and arrived at the correct conclusion. I think this is too charitable. So many points of contention have both sides using morality as the justification for their position, and if they are on the side of "what is right" then there's no point even considering the words of the other side, because clearly the others are on the side of "wrong". This is, of course, not an entirely new phenomenon. What is different is that we can communicate more, and faster, than in the past- one might hope that would help us more readily understand each other, but the opposite is proving to be true.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Disease denial wasn't invented with COVID, it's been around for as long as medical treatment has been, ranging from "I am not sick" to "Sure, I have it, but and I'm fine so your claims about it being a risk are BS" to the flat-out crackpot "germ theory is fake, wake up sheeple". COVID only showed exactly how many people are disappointments.

AlexandrB 4y ago

It might not be common, but denialism of highly-fatal diseases does exist and with pretty tragic consequences: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Maggiore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Maggiore

lazyasciiart 4y ago

There were people in hospitals dying from covid still saying it was all a hoax. https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nurses-are-dealing-with-patients-who-think-covid-is-a-hoax.html https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nurses-are-dealing-with-patie...

lolinder 4y ago
There are also a few flat earthers out there. Most COVID skeptics are somewhere in between "deniers at all costs" and "mildly suspicious that the government's recommendations are politically motivated". As in any normal curve, the vast majority are in the latter end of the spectrum and would be very happy to accept that TB is deadly.

amluto 4y ago

Tuberculosis is weird. The CDC estimates that 13M Americans have latent infections. Asymptomatic people are only tested in the US under special circumstances. As far as I know, no widespread surveillance or treatment program exists. And yet the actual burden of disease caused by TB in the US seems quite low. As far as I know, no one really knows why TB is not a major problem in the US. But saying that half of active TB patients is a bit like saying that car accidents kill half of the people who are critically injured by a car accident — it may be true (although I made up that last statistic), but it rather overstates the severity of the underlying problem (TB and car accidents).

Swizec 4y ago
> As far as I know, no one really knows why TB is not a major problem in the US Could it be the mandatory vaccination programme? I even had to get a booster as condition for my greencard because it had been 10 years.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  That would be my guess as well. TB vaccination is mandatory for most public schooling in the US, and boosters are common.
  - amluto 4y ago
    Citation needed. The TB vaccine (BCG) is barely used in the US. It is not on the CDC schedule, it’s not routinely given in any school I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t seem to be recommended for US-born people at all. I find it surprising that the US even bothers giving it to green card recipients, given that the US has no particular shortage of people with TB infections that can potentially infect people domestically. And the BCG vaccine isn’t even particularly effective.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Yeah, I made a mistake: I thought the T in DTaP was tuberculosis, but it's tetanus.