The World's Deadliest Infectious Disease Is About to Get Worse

[mahatmakanejeeves]

The World’s Deadliest Infectious Disease Is About to Get Worse
By retracting foreign aid, President Trump could make tuberculosis untreatable again.

By John Green
MARCH 15, 2025, 11:58 AM ET

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a near-perfect predator. In 1882, Robert Koch, the physician who discovered the microbe, told a room full of scientists that it caused one in seven of all deaths. In 2023, after a brief hiatus, tuberculosis regained from COVID its status as the world’s deadliest infectious disease—a title it has held for most of what we know of human history.

Some people die of TB when their lungs collapse or fill with fluid. For others, scarring leaves so little healthy lung tissue that breathing becomes impossible. Or the infection spreads to the brain or the spinal column, or they suffer a sudden, uncontrollable hemorrhage. Lack of appetite and extreme abdominal pain can fuel weight loss so severe that it whittles away muscle and bone. This is why TB was widely known as “consumption” until the 20th century—it seemed to be a disease that consumed the very body, shrinking and shriveling it. On a trip to Sierra Leone in 2019, I met a boy named Henry Reider, whose mix of shyness and enthusiasm for connection reminded me of my own son. I thought he was perhaps 9 years old. His doctors later told me that he was in fact 17, his body stunted by a combination of malnutrition and tuberculosis.

{snip}

[lastlib]

1. Thanks, Mr. Crime Minister---

for NOTHING, you trainload of dysenteric whaleshit.

[surfered]

2. No problem, bleach or cod liver oil should fix it.

[mitch96]

4. How about a little ivermectin for good measure?...nt

[surfered]

5. And shining a light up your backside.😁

[dchill]

9. AKA fluorescent anal probage.

[IronLionZion]

3. Making Deadly Pandemics Great Again

[chouchou]

6. Republicans, Fox News, MAGA's and Donald Trump brought back the bad ol' days..

I hope I get a chance to thank them.

[Quixote1818]

7. John Green did a video about this too

?si=ff5onpFpxGcM28WC

[LT Barclay]

8. Of all the possible solutions to the world's problems, the wealthy have chosen to reduce the global population

By any means

[RandomNumbers]

14. Yes, while suckering the "pro-life" crowd

I wonder when (or if) said crowd will ever figure it out?

[LT Barclay]

16. NO. I have dear friends who will never get it. And the more I read and ponder it, while it sounds harsh, there is no

biblical basis for them to be antiabortion. It is all inference and there are passages that indicate that it definitely does not amount to murder.
I promised to post something a while back and I haven't been diligent about it, but there are pages of scriptures supporting all aspects of environmental protection that are specific and yet the right ignores them.

[littlemissmartypants]

10. Why no...

Archive link, mahatmakanejeeves?

[KY_EnviroGuy]

11. I vaguely recall as a 50s/60s kid, people dying of TB and the TB hospitals.....

in middle Tennessee. I would suspect because a high percentage of adult men were smokers during that time, that factor aided the spread and severity of this disease. That, along with a lot of poor sanitation practices.

Frightening to see this one along with measles again rearing their ugly heads.

The GOP brainwashing pandemic alone is enough disease for any nation to suffer with....

KY.......

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Tuberculosis/Consumption was known as the Disease of the Poor

in the 18th century.

[Meowmee]

13. Awful as it can be treated now

The BCG vaccine is given to infants in many countries but it is only effective for children, apparently, not so much in adults etc. It seems to be good at preventing tb meningitis, pulmonary tb, and miliary tb in children. It is given to infants in many countries with high incidence of tb including Europe.The Us, Switzerland and Spain don't give it. Here it is not used due to there being very little tb now and because it is not as effective in adults maybe, however children could still get it. I remember a friend of a friend at college had it and her fiance was worried she would catch it from them.

My Uncle, who was a pulmonologist, told us not to get BCG vaccine because it makes it hard to tell if you had been exposed and were at risk for tb, it can cause false positives. I remember getting tested for it every year as a child.

BGC vaccine is also being studied now for other things such as treatment for type 1 diabetes. The doctor doing that research and trials also found maybe during the pandemic that it helped prevent covid infection in type 1 diabetics. It is used as a treatment for bladder cancer and it may help prevent other cancers such as leukemia and lung cancer as well as help overall immunity to diseases/viruses.

[Hekate]

15. KnR