[dole]

A few anecdotes about TB:

I was diagnosed with a latent TB infection received from a family member back in the early 1990's as a teen. I believe city and state departments of health must've tracked the "outbreak" back but I don't think it was ever on the news or made a big deal of. By the time we were diagnosed, the family member's symptoms weren't anything worse than their typical smoker's cough and was a heavy cigarette smoker anyway, not sure how active his infection actually was at the time but he never required hospitalization, just similar antibiotics, IIRC.

I was treated with Isoniazid (known as INH, one pill daily for a year), I never felt any symptoms from the infection or side effects from INH, they monitored monthly initially with skin prick tests then chest x-rays and after the year was up, I was done. This did prevent me from donating blood a few years after the infection was cleared; I assume there are still rules in place.

Neither the latent infection nor the year long treatment were harsh. IMHO, TB's a powerful but rather slow-moving internal infectant, and it was historically ravaging because of the earlier conditions of the world and lack of medicine at that time.