3 ms·
Kind of bizarre to make this big of a case over one woman. TB is possibly the most widespread infectious disease in the world. It's the leading cause of death f
by 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
Kind of bizarre to make this big of a case over one woman. TB is possibly the most widespread infectious disease in the world. It's the leading cause of death from infectious disease after COVID-19. One quarter of the world's population has a latent TB infection.
An active TB infection is basically less dangerous to the general public than a person with active COVID-19. In both cases, elderly and immunocompromised people are the most at risk, and there are vaccines for both, though we stopped giving kids the TB vaccine in the west. But a person with active TB will usually infect only about 10-15 people in their lifetime, whereas COVID-19 is much more infectious.
- nerdchum 3y agoAntibiotic resistant tuberculosis is pretty terrifying though. One untreatable TB infection causes 15 new ones and those 15 new ones cause 15 new ones each? In a pandemic population size macro sense that's huge and exponential.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago15 people in their lifetime. COVID is spread much faster because it's more contagious.
- estebank 3y agoTB kills fewer people than COVID-19 because most people have had COVID-19 but only a small portion of the population has had untreated TB.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoI didn't mean "in the USA", I meant globally. Many countries have over 90% of the population infected with TB. In the USA it's 33.4 million people infected with TB.
- estebank 3y agoYes, and in those countries TB is one the leading causes of death![1] In 2021, there were 10.6 million people infected, and 1.6 million died from it.[2] [1]: https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/tuberculosis/by-country/ https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/tuberculo... [2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...