If someone coughs and it breaks a rib, did they have a disease or were they elderly?

It’s not actually that uncommon (scarely). If you cough hard enough for example because of pertussis (or whooping cough) you can exert a mssive force on the ribs and they will give. It can happen to young or old people and doesn’t mean that there was anything wrong with the rib before it broke.

funny enough my sister did that. of course she has had some other funny (in the way she got them) injuries such as brook her foot getting out of bed, brook her arm playing tag. so no she was an average teenager that got sick of light coughs that didnt help so she coughed hard a few time and brook a rib.

I did it in my early 30’s. I had a really bad cough.

I’ve dislocated a rib coughing. I think rib injury is pretty common due to this.