Your claim is that CPAP gave this person a _communicable_ chest infection, which was then cured by herbal medicine? How could that possibly happen unless your local distilled water supply was contaminated with tuberculosis bacteria?
What part of "I make no claims for Chinese herbal cures" did you not understand?
It just underscores how batshit crazy people are and the low quality of some so-called "medical cures". Sometimes that includes "snake-oil salesmen", a category into which I now put CPAP vendors.
Improper cleaning maybe. People get Legionnaire's from shitty motel rooms with AC units that don't drain correctly, so it isn't that farfetched for a closed loop respirator full of moisture to harbor nasty pathogens all the same.
Yes, you can get infections from poorly maintained CPAPs (or respirators -- are those a scam, too?) but that's not going to spread to your whole family.