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I was going to say the same thing!! Tuberculosis was the number 1 killer of humans of all time!!
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I was going to say the same thing!! Tuberculosis was the number 1 killer of humans of all time!!
In Korea (and East Asia), there is a disease that was famously confused with tuberculosis because it looks almost identical… but it is NOT TB and not contagious person-to-person.
The disease you’re looking for is paragonimiasis (lung fluke disease)
This is the one that shows up again and again in Korean medical history and older dramas.
Why paragonimiasis was mistaken for tuberculosis
Symptoms overlap almost perfectly with TB:
Chronic cough
Chest pain
Fever and weakness
Weight loss
Coughing or vomiting blood (hemoptysis) ← this is the key similarity
Abnormal lung X-rays that look like TB lesions
Doctors historically misdiagnosed it as TB for years.
Why it’s safe
NOT airborne
NOT contagious between people