Comment by attila-lendvai
7 hours ago
> TB is also shockingly infectious
let's keep HN as a place where people usually do at least a cursory research before they state things with such confidence... or inject a few words of doubt to signal that you haven't done the homework.
if you feel the urge to fight this: i lived with someone infected with TB.
e.g. measles is shockingly infectious. TB is not.
A single, untreated person with TB will infect 1.5 to 4 people if public health interventions don’t happen. Measles sits at 12 to 18 people per infected person.
In case anyone was curious. Depending on what your priors were, 1.5 to 4 might be shocking.
don't forget that untreated TB runs for years, sometimes for many years.
measles heals in weeks (and 99.9% non-malnutrished survives without lasting damage; see France prior to 1983).
also note the exponential function here... and an exponent of 2 and 12 are very different animals.