This weekend I started reading Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green.
I’m enjoying all of the historical and contemporary stories in it about people who had or who currently have this disease.
While I do wish there were more facts and figures, too, maybe that will be included later on.
If you like history or medicine, you might like this book, too.
#Bookstodon #Nonfiction #AmReading #Tuberculosis #Medicine #History
“You can think of TB outbreaks like a canary in the coalmine of our public health infrastructure,” said David Dowdy, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“What causes them to happen is a weakening of our public health infrastructure.”
#PublicHealth #CDC #Tuberculosis #RepublicanDeathCult
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/kansas-tuberculosis-public-health
Today In Labor History March 26, 1850: Edward Bellamy was born. Bellamy was an American author and socialist political activist, most well-known for his utopian novel, “Looking Backward,” one of the most commercially successful books published in the 19th century. It particularly appealed to the intellectuals who were alienated by the Gilded Age greed, corruption and violence. His book inspired many to form so-called “nationalist clubs” to implement his ideas of a society free of private property, social classes, war, poverty, crime, lawyers, politicians, prostitution, merchants, soldiers, and taxes. Plus, everyone could retire by the age of 45. He died at the age of 48 from tuberculosis.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #utopia #edwardbellamy #poverty #prostitution #PrivateProperty #socialism #tuberculosis #war #books #author #writer #fiction @bookstadon
"Tuberculosis continued to rise again in the U.S. last year, reaching its highest levels in more than a dozen years.
More than 10,300 cases were reported last year, an 8% increase from 2023 and the highest since 2011, according to preliminary data posted this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
https://apnews.com/article/tuberculosis-tb-infection-cdc-d1165566b838bd8a838975e4e5e13b79
It’s #WorldTuberculosisDay – a day dedicated to the efforts to treat and eliminate the world’s deadliest infectious disease. We encourage you to learn more about this disease, and you could start with our video about its etymology – and about John Green’s newly released book on the subject. https://youtube.com/shorts/CxTnnxSnzB4?feature=share
COVID minimizers have said for years that “if” it was that dangerous we would see increases in other illnesses
We’re at that stage, and no one is talking about it. Deny. Deflect. Obfuscate.
“Other illnesses that weaken the immune system and allow latent TB infections to emerge may also be at play”
https://www.newser.com/story/366057/tb-cases-spike-to-highest-level-since-2011.html
"The cure for TB—roughly half a year on antibiotics—has existed since the 1950s, and works for most patients. Yet, in the decades since, more than 100 million people have died of tuberculosis because the drugs are not widely available in many parts of the world. The most proximate cause of contemporary tuberculosis deaths is not M. tuberculosis, but Homo sapiens. Now, as the Trump administration decimates foreign-aid programs, the U.S. is both making survival less likely for people with TB and risking the disease becoming far more treatment-resistant. After decades of improvement, we could return to something more like the world before the cure.
Anyone can get tuberculosis—in fact, a quarter of all humans living now, including an estimated 13 million Americans, have been infected with the bacterium, which spreads through coughs, sneezes, and breaths. Most will only ever have a latent form of the infection, in which infection-fighting white blood cells envelop the bacteria so it cannot wreak havoc on the body. But in 5 to 10 percent of infections, the immune system can’t produce enough white blood cells to surround the invader. M. tuberculosis explodes outward, and active disease begins.
Certain triggers make the disease more likely to go from latent to active, including air pollution and an immune system weakened by malnutrition, stress, or diabetes. The disease spreads especially well along the trails that poverty has blazed for it: in crowded living and working conditions such as slums and poorly ventilated factories. Left untreated, most people who develop active TB will die of the disease."
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/03/tuberculosis-death-usaid-trump/682062/
In 1890 Robert Koch claimed he had discovered a cure for #tuberculosis . However, this cure is often referred to as Koch's greatest failure.
This is one of the earliest specimens of Koch's original tuberculin to be received in Edinburgh.
The surprisingly connected origins of "tuberculosis" and "thousand".
Big Picture Science for Mar 10, 2025: Preventable
Two infectious diseases that we’ve been able to prevent for a half-century are re-emerging. One of the most contagious viruses in the world, measles, is spreading in the United States. Anti-vax sentiment has driven vaccination rates down leading to outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico. The U.S. has also seen an uptick in cases of tuberculosis which has reclaimed its position the deadliest infection globally. The author John Green shares how his travels to Sierra Leone inspired his new book about TB. Through the story of a young patient, Henry, he highlights the health inequities that contribute to over a million and a half tuberculosis deaths annually despite the existence of a cure.
Guests:
* Adam Ratner – Pediatric infectious disease doctor in New York City, and author of Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health
* John Green – Author of The Fault in Our Stars, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection
Download podcast at - https://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/preventable
You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/
Get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
CDC Data Just In Shows A New Covid Variant Has Taken Over In The US
"Wrote a while ago about old school infectious disease control where for example every floor in a tuberculosis sanatorium had a balcony patients could be wheeled onto with big windows to bring in air and sunlight to reduce disease transmission. We should do this again.
The forgotten history of infectious disease control before vaccines and antibiotics."
#Vaccines #Tuberculosis #Trump #RFKJr #HHS #USPol #GOPDeathCult #Eugenics #PublicHealth
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/the-forgotten-lessons-of-infectious
1993 Paris, 2008 Zimbabwe 15 years apart same AIDS patients. If you get #tuberculosis (TB) when you have #HIVAIDS the infection is much more severe and spreads throughout the body beyond the lung. Patients I have seen in Paris and in Africa before they had access to anti-HIV treatment had TB in the bones. An example below is a TB infection of the vertebra which collapsed. TB can spread to other organs and is a leading cause of death in AIDS patients.
https://www.pmmonline.org/media/gyjjiwmq/picture85.jpg?rmode=max&%20287&height=320
#CallToAction via John Green: call and/or email your electeds about restoring funding for the Global Drug Facility, which underpins health initiatives around the planet.
Do not let them tell you that Musk and the rest "didn't know" what they were doing when they killed USAID funding--they killed it and with it millions of innocents.
I’m hoping that the smarter #Americans have or are making plans to get the hell out of Dodge.
It won’t be long before countries start denying access to anyone from the #US due to raging epidemics due to the cessation of vaccinations & the end of monitoring diseases in the community.
CDC 'disease detectors' among hundreds fired by Trump.
#AvianFlu #measles #covid #tuberculosis #polio #USPol #auspol #Trump #Kennedy #pandemic
A good overview of what the USAID freeze means for our fight against tuberculosis and other diseases of injustice.
"By one estimate [tuberculosis] has killed about one out of every seven humans who have ever lived but in densely populated communities the statistics are even more sobering [...]
So a resurgence of tuberculosis especially drug resistant TB is not a matter of like thousands more premature deaths but millions or tens of millions."
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PBjQgizWRBA
Check the video description for donation links.
Bedaquiline, a critical drug used in the fight against tuberculosis, just got 54% cheaper. #infectiousdiseases #tuberculosis #publichealth #disease #health https://www.stoptb.org/what-we-do/facilitate-access-tb-drugs-diagnostics/global-drug-facility-gdf/new-tools/bedaquiline
MAGAs are nostalgic for some imaginary time in the past when things were supposedly better than today. But I don't think they were imagining going back to world in which people were dying painful deaths from consumption (see attached article), or diseases preventable through vaccines (see current measles outbreak in Texas). Their outbreak doubled to 48 cases this week, with 13 hospitalized. The county affected has among the highest vaccination exemption rates in the state.
Since 2000, USAID had helped save the lives of >58 million TB patients worldwide. Now agencies are scrambling to make up the shortfall.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/health/measles-texas-outbreak/index.html
@johngreen (the author of The Fault in Our Stars) recently wrote a non-fiction book about #tuberculosis and he is alarmed at Trump’s and Musk’s attack against #USAID because USAID is possibly the largest sponsor of the distribution of TB meds throughout the world.
When new strains of #tuberculosis start circulating from places #PresidentMusk has directed his pet #Trump to block from receiving drugs from @altusaid.bsky.social they'll come here. They don't respect borders, titles, or wealth. Could we get some #TB to these rich assholes? By accident, of course.
This Is Not Normal
