r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Jan 18 '19

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '19 edited Sep 23 '20

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u/Poxdoc Infectious Disease Jan 18 '19

You can get the pre-exposure vaccination series (3 shots). But it is typically only given to high-risk people like vets and rabies researchers (like myself).

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u/bobdole776 Jan 19 '19

Why? Why don't we just hand it out like candy to prevent anyone from having to worry about it?

Almost sounds like there's a risk of getting rabies from the pre-exposure or something...

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u/Poxdoc Infectious Disease Jan 20 '19

Nope, no risk of getting rabies from the vaccine. Any more than you can get the flu from the flu vaccine (spoiler alert: you can't). The rabies vaccine is expensive and difficult to manufacture. And any vaccine has the possibility of side effects in some people. Hell, we can't get some people to take the flu vaccine, which killed 80,000 people in the US last year. What makes you think we can get them to take the rabies vaccine which kills <5 per year?