
Millions predicted to develop tuberculosis as result of the lockdowns - EGreg
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/06/millions-develop-tuberculosis-tb-covid-19-lockdown
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JPLeRouzic
A quite long summary:

The title is a bit misleading, it is not really about the risk to have
millions of people developing Tuberculosis due to lockdown, but rather to the
bizarre assignation of research resources. After all, one quarter of the
world's population is thought to have latent infection with TB.

Dr Lucica Ditiu who is the Executive Secretary of the WHO Partnership, "Stop
TB", says that for 100 years we have had only one Tuberculosis vaccine and we
have only two or three potential vaccines in the pipeline.

So she says that TB scientists look with amazement at a disease which… is 120
days old and has 100 vaccine candidates in preparation. They think this world
is really crazy.

She argues that not only we do not have a good vaccine against tuberculosis
(in children, the vaccine decreases the risk of contracting the infection by
only 20% and the risk of infection becoming an active disease by almost 60%),
but we do not have a vaccine against HIV, and no vaccine against malaria,
etc..

~~~
alacombe
> So she says that TB scientists look with amazement at a disease which… is
> 120 days old and has 100 vaccine candidates in preparation. They think this
> world is really crazy.

Expecting a correlation between media exposure and vaccine is completely
silly, and using it in an argument even more. HIV has had much more exposure,
probably trillions invested globally, and still no vaccine after 40 years of
research.

~~~
tinus_hn
HIV has medication you can take that makes you immune. The only difference to
a vaccine is that you have to keep taking it.

If you get HIV there is also medication that turns it into a chronic infection
but you can’t infect others and you will not get ill.

So no there’s no vaccine but they’re pretty close.

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Isinlor
COVID-19 impacts rich, western world, tuberculosis not so much.

COVID-19 kills in USA 3 times more people in a day with all mitigations in
place than TB does in a year without any extraordinary effort on mitigation.

Statistics for USA [0]: > In 2017, the most recent data available, 515 deaths
in the United States were attributed to TB. This is a decrease from 528 deaths
attributed to TB in 2016.

So, let's be honest, we - I mean people like me, or you here on HN - don't
care enough to really help these millions dieing out of our bubble... That's
the truth. We may be outraged that nothing happens, but I will not change my
job and invest my privilege to help this people. Will you?

[0]
[https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/statistics/tb...](https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/statistics/tbtrends.htm)

~~~
redis_mlc
> COVID-19 impacts rich, western world, tuberculosis not so much.

Well, TB is endemic in the Vietnamese community.

Guess where two of the largest communities are? LA and SF Bay.

If you're observant, you can see public health nurses scurrying around town
doing TB follow-up visits on them.

