A new paper calculated that more than $100bn was spent developing covid vaccines during the first year of the pandemic. Investment in new tuberculosis vaccines has been a thousand times lower
, based on excess-death figures, suggests the true figure is between 17m and 28m). And the new pandemic has made the old one worse. After many years of slow but steady decline, the number of deaths fromis rising again. According to figures published on October 27th by the World Health Organisation’s GlobalProgramme, the death toll from tuberculosis was 1.6m in 2021, a rise of 14% since 2019.
Diagnoses fell more sharply, from 7.1m in 2019 to 5.8m in 2020, especially in poorer countries where the disease is most common . That was not because fewer people were falling sick, but because fewer could get to a doctor or a clinic. Some who fell ill were nervous about violating lockdown rules by leaving home. Many confused the signs of—which generally attacks the lungs, leaving patients exhausted, breathless and coughing—with the symptoms of covid.