When I lived in San Diego, my friends used to warn me about eating at any restaurants due to rumors of TB infected workers.
Yet I had wrongly assumed that there was a law requiring all food handlers to be TB tested.
Pneumonia would be bad enough and not all cases of pneumonia present with a cough. In this economy and increased job competition, I think it is unlikely that someone would take off work due to illness, especially if they were unaware that they had a contagious illness.
I eat in restaurants daily in San Diego. They did require TB tests for food handlers when I was in high school. I had both the skin test and X ray before I could work at Farrell’s. My lung X ray shows Valley Fever walled off. Amorphous calcification. TB shows circular “punched out” lesions.
airborne index
Pneumonia would be bad enough and not all cases of pneumonia present with a cough. In this economy and increased job competition, I think it is unlikely that someone would take off work due to illness, especially if they were unaware that they had a contagious illness......about ten years ago, my friend who is a doctor, had a Guatamalan patient with HEP something and TB come to him for treatment . She was a waitress, she told him. He immediately forbade her from working and began treating her, first in a hospital and told her to stay home until she could be medically evaluated further. One night he invited some friends and a State Senator to dinner to discuss some Hospital business in the City’s upscalest restaurant. Guess who his waitress was? He shut the restaurant down right there, had the board of health there and hospitalized her until she was pronounced noncommunicable.