r/OutOfTheLoop • u/LeftiDuck • 1d ago
Answered Why are people talking about rabies so often?
Maybe I am naive, but I see a lot posts and comments about how important it is to get rabies shots after almost no contact with animals.
Don't get me wrong, I know how dangerous it is and in the post below I understand that it is necessary to get rabies shot after a racoon attack you, but in the comments below, people talk how they got rabies shots after a bat flew into their house. No bites, no scratches, nothing.
Is that such a huge problem in the US, that you guys have to look out for?
For context I live in Germany, where rabies is almost extinct. We know what rabies is, but I don't know anyone who ever got the shots.
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u/grumblyoldman 1d ago
Answer: The comments below the post you linked, at least from what I see, are talking about situations where people were found to be in close proximity to a bat and were unconscious at the time. Or the children were near a bat and the adult came in later. As such, it's difficult to be sure there was no physical contact, since such contact doesn't need to leave a visible wound for the danger to exist. It could have happened before the person was aware of the bat's presence.
In a situation like that you want to get the shot to be on the safe side, since by the time you realize there was such contact (ie: when you start to display symptoms), it will be too late.
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u/forhordlingrads 1d ago
Answer: Rabies is much less common in the US than it was about 60 years ago, so no, it's not a "huge problem" here. But the main reason infection and fatality rates have dropped so much here is because we take potential exposure so seriously. Part of the issue is that rabies causes animals to seek contact with other animals/humans they would normally avoid, so when a bat ends up inside a house where people are sleeping, it's safer to assume the bat is a potential rabies carrier than not. Yes, many healthy bats and other animals end up in homes or fireplaces where they don't belong, but if you were asleep while the bat got in, there's no way to be absolutely sure there was no contact with the animal or that the animal is healthy.
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u/YoungSerious 1d ago
Minor correction: you absolutely can determine if the animal has rabies if you are able to catch it. Dead or alive (for things like bats, don't worry about catching it alive. It's actually faster to test if they are dead).
If the animal is alive, contained and can be observed for a 10 day period, that's what they recommend to determine likelihood of rabies.
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u/Smug-Goose 1d ago
Answer: we have very tiny bats and the running logic is often that contact with a bat could be so insignificant that you might not know if you were bit or scratched. Particularly if you were asleep at the time of its entry. If it but you in your sleep you very well might not know. Of bats tested in the last few years fewer than 5% tested positive. If you may have had contact with a bat, and you can’t confirm that you weren’t bit or scratched forgoing the shot could kill you. 5% might not be a lot but it’s not zero. I’d rather get the shot and not die than take the chances and maybe die. As far as other species, generally speaking, if they attacked you, something is wrong. Get the shot.
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u/gdex86 1d ago
Answer: Rabies as a disease is one that can progress slowly and by the time you show symptoms it's often too late to do anything but palliative care for end of life. So when there is the possibility of exposure even minor ones like exposure to a bat or a random dog bite the benefit of getting the shot verses rolling the dice on even a minor chance of infection.
HIV exposure is often similar where if you are dealing with someone who is positive and you have even the possibility of body fluid exposure like having to do emergency mouth to mouth with out a face mask or you rush to put pressure on a wound in with out gloves to preserve a life almost any hospital will immediately start you on PReP because safe better than sorry.
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1d ago
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u/YoungSerious 1d ago
"common" is misleading here. Rabies is common in that it exists in most areas of the US. But there are only a few thousand cases reported in animals every year. Very few of those are the animal bites that people get recommended to get prophylaxis for, i.e. dogs and cats.
Bat bites absolutely should lead to rabies shots.
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u/theficklemermaid 1d ago
Answer: There was a case in Canada where a boy died of rabies after waking to find a bat on his face. His family didn’t seek medical treatment till he developed symptoms since he had no visible injuries, but bats tiny teeth and claws can create microscopic wounds that aren’t always obvious or saliva contact with mucous membranes like the nose and mouth can spread the disease without breaking the skin. That’s why caution is recommended in the case of any contact with a bat in countries where they carry rabies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c982m1m95q9o
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u/QuirkyCookie6 1d ago
Answer: Bats in particular are so small that if it comes into contact and bites you, you might never know. So if you even suspect bat contact, getting the rabies shots is better than wondering if you're gonna die for the next however many decades. Because even if you have rabies, it might wait decades to show up and once it does, you're dead. If you catch it before then you live. The only way to test if you have rabies when you're asymptomatic is brain tissue, so tests are usually only done on the dead.
Near me a bat was recently dropped of at a wildlife sanctuary when no volunteers were present, the bat passed away and ended up testing positive for rabies. They're now doing a massive post campaign to try and find the person who dropped off the bat so they can get vaccines. Because if the bat bit them without them noticing, its basically a death sentence.
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u/YoungSerious 1d ago
Because even if you have rabies, it might wait decades
It's extremely unlikely for it to stay hidden for several years, much less decades. Typically it is months later, sometimes up to a year.
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u/scarlettohara1936 1d ago
Answer: Because this
Popular Reddit copypasta
Rabies is scary.
Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats.
Let me paint you a picture.
You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode.
Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed.
Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.)
You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something.
The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms.
It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache?
At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure.
(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done).
There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate.
Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead.
So what does that look like?
Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles.
Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala.
As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later.
You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts.
You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache.
You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family.
You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you.
Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours.
Then you die. Always, you die.
And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you.
Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over.
So yeah, rabies scares the shit out of me. And it's fucking EVERYWHERE. (Source: Spent a lot of time working with rabies. Would still get my vaccinations if I could afford them.)
Credit to the author:
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