Is this just more contagious than TB? Why do healthcare workers not contract TB they way they are this virus? I'd be interested in your view comparing the two situations.
It would appear so. 'Virulently' so if you forgive the pun. It appears that Mother nature appears to have concocted a really successful virus with this one ...
One of the 'talking med heads' this AM mentioned that this disease (SARS) would most likely be around us forever now - spot 'breakouts' would be seen here and there but no complete eradication like we've succeeded in doing with some contagion. One thing to bear in mind - a LARGE number of people have managed to beat this 'bug' and still live.
Because not everyone who gets exposed to a bug will get sick, and not everyone who gets sick will get sick enough to be diagnosed. There are a lot of people in their 70s-90s running around with inactive TB that is only observed after death, or if they have a chest X-ray for some other reason.
Back in the 18th and 19th century, many of the poor in large cities like London, NY, etc. lived under such deplorable conditions that they had no resistance to TB infections. It became so common that it was called "The White Plague." There were many ways that it could be spread through all the social classes: for instance, it was common for wealthier women to use "wet nurses" to feed their babies. If a wet nurse had TB, then the baby was a good candidate for infection too.
We still have pockets of TB in poor populations (prisons, AIDs victims, very poor neighborhoods.) It just hasn't made its way into the general population, but there's no reason why it couldn't.