what IS tuberculosis, why is it so deadly, and why did it take humanity so long to be able to treat it
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It’s a bacteria that lodges in your lungs. It can remain dormant for years and then suddenly become extremely contagious. It gets walled off in the lungs, antibiotics have a very hard time (months ) killing it. Kills you by wrecking your lungs
TB is a bacterium that causes organ lesions, usually in the lungs but you can get them elsewhere. Affected lung tissue can’t work properly, so you ultimately die from organ failure.
The answers to your last two questions are the same: because it took us a long time to understand it. You have to remember that germ theory wasn’t widely accepted until the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Before that people had all kinds of crazy ideas about what caused diseases. Once we realized what bacteria were and how they worked, we identified antibiotic cures and vaccines relatively quickly.
Tuberculosis is a mycobacterium. It’s very small and tends to be intracellular. Prior to microscopy, humanity had no way of seeing it.
It’s not as deadly on an individual level but rather because it affects so many people, outside the industrialized world, most people have nbeen exposed to it. A healthy body usually walls it off, but those with depressed immunity or other susceptibilities, can have progressive infections. It typically affects the lungs but can spread throughout the body. It’s currently very resistant to many antibiotics which makes it harder to treat and more deadly
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