Thread by @magi_jay

It's taken about 18 months, but as a former Tuberculosis patient, I just reached my absolute limit with Public Health hot takes from poorly informed people. It is driving me up the freaking wall.

I'm not even talking about conservatives, from whom I expect absolute nonsense. I am talking about other pundits, journalists, and analysts who are not doing the *bare minimum* to understand how infectious diseases have been historically suppressed in this country.

For the folks who are like, "public health makes no sense blah blah individual responsibility" I would like to know if they think I should have been legally mandated to take harmful antibiotics for 6 months &, if they think that was right, how the rationale differs for COVID

The diseases are different, as are concerns about spread. Viruses mutate. Bacteria like TB mutate too, into anti-biotic resistant forms. All the differences aside though, there'd be a hell of a lot more TB in this country if it weren't for aggressive public health.

Do you like living in a country that's not riddled w/ TB? Including resistant strains? I think you probably do. Because TB sucks & the meds for the resistant kind are even worse than those for the treatable kind. We're talking liver damage, neurotoxicity, & deafness.

And, if you like living in such a place, do you know why you get to? Because public health takes infectious people like me and threatens them with jail if they are not surveilled for 6+ months, including checking under your tongue for misplaced pills. Every day they do this.

That's why you get to live without TB. That's why you are not in danger.

So stop whining about mask & vaccine mandates. You only care b/c you are now *seeing* public health for the first time.

But public health has been doing this all along. And that's why *you* are safe.

And trust me, I was a *compliant* TB patient. I understood the risk I posed to the community. But even I might have messed up the drug regimen or taken a break after a few months if it were not for public health controlling every aspect of my life.

"Oh sure, I'm gonna keep taking these pills that give me serotonin poisoning and damage my liver and numb my limbs and stain all of my clothes because my sweat is now orange."

Said no one ever.

People do this b/c public health *makes* them do this

And, again, that's why the rest of y'all are safe. That's what infectious disease control looks like. Putting individuals through hell so the community can be safe. It's not new. It's been going on for decades. It's just the first time *you've* noticed it.

This is what multiple drug resistant TB looks like & what the treatment entails. Effects ranging from hearing loss to hepatitis to psychosis. And few people have to ever worry about it in *this country* b/c public health effectively takes over TB patients' lives.