“By the middle of the 18th century, around 1% of London’s population was dying from tuberculosis (TB) every year. You can see this in the chart below, which shows modeled estimates of TB death rates in London.

Let’s pause on that. Every year, 1 in 100 people died from TB. That means that if you lived in London, every five years, 1 in 20 people you knew might have died from it. That’s one person for every three or four households.

If London were to experience that scale of infection and death today, tuberculosis would kill around 90,000 people every year. That’s almost double the number who currently die in London from all causes — cancer, heart disease, the flu, COVID-19, dementia, road injuries, homicides, and many others.”

From Our World in Data.