Tournament of Pandemics - Plague vs Tuberculosis

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-03-30 11:24:00 UTC
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(photo credit: Aidan Jones)

This is the second pairing in the third round. Whoever wins this one goes all the way to the last round. It’s a very tough competition. Both diseases are seasoned competitors; they’ve been infecting people for millennia. You can find mummies with TB symptoms, and the plague laid waste to Europe in the middle ages.

Both tuberculosis and plague have non-human reservoirs. They can spread through the air, and person-to-person. They’re not bound by climate or a mosquito vector. They hit hard in dense, urban environments when the world is getting more urban. The plague has an even more virulent pneumonic form. Tuberculosis has multi and extensively drug resistant varieties.

The Winner

This one goes to tuberculosis. Both diseases are gruesome, and have plenty of global pandemic potential. But plague’s potential is largely hypothetical. It could get very bad. Tuberculosis, however, is very bad now and keeps on getting worse. It’s not a hypothetical threat. It’s a present and growing threat.

We now have our final pairing in the tournament of pandemics: tuberculosis vs influenza. Tune in tomorrow as we choose the next global pandemic.

Alanna Shaikh
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