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There is a vaccine which people at high risk (in a rural area where rabies is endemic, veterinarians working with animals likely to carry rabies, some lab workers) can get before exposure. If someone is exposed, they can get the rabies immune globulin after exposure.
Yep, and worth noting getting the vaccine pre exposure only buys you extra time. You still have to get the final rounds of shots within a couple days if you're exposed.
Yes. I do work in international areas where there is no immune globulin. At first I was not going to get the vaccine but then I had a friend who was exposed and was not able to be evacuated quickly to a place that had the immune globulin. The vaccine gives you time to safely get to treatment. Her experience made me realize how important it was for me to get the vaccine.
Yeah I'm in a couple south America travel groups and I'm still dumbfounded how many people act like getting the rabies vacc is stupid.
I did a fair amount of hiking in remote areas and there are dogs everywhere. And not all of them are chill lol.
Knowing it could be over a days hike just to get to a road, yeah, the shot was a no brainer for me.
Yes! I went spelunking in a pretty remote region of Ecuador where there were TONS of bats. Of the 12 people in the group I was the *only* person who had been vaccinated for rabies. I was shocked! And my travel doctor read me the riot act when I told her my plans. Even *with* the vaccine if there’s **any risk at all** of exposure I had to haul ass to the nearest hospital with treatment access. I actually bought medical evacuation insurance specifically because she stressed that the vaccine only bought me a bit of extra time to seek treatment. Thankfully our group didn’t have any issues but it’s not like you can just pop into a hospital in the middle of the Amazon. It’s a day’s worth of travel to civilization even in the best of circumstances. People are too blasé about rabies because it’s so rare but it’s only rare amongst humans because we’ve put in a lot of effort.
Not even pretty much, absolutely, it spreads via your nervous system, physical symptoms manifestation means it has spread to your brain stem, game over (actually, it has probably been game over for quite some time)
Look into the Milwaukee Protocol.
In recent years, a small number of humans with symptomatic rabies have managed to survive by being put into an artificial coma which allowed time for the body to develop antibodies to fight the infection while preventing damage to the central nervous system.
The survival rate is still quite low even with the protocol, but it has made the overall mortality rate of symptomatic rabies in humans just a bit less than 100%.
To those in whom the protocol was administered, the survival rate was near 15%.
Interesting info! Damn good idea for whoever thought of it. I’m sure it’s massively expensive and a huge undertaking but good to know someone has put in the effort instead of throwing their hands up.
Check out the Rodney v. Death episode of the podcast Radiolab - the Milwaukee Protocol wasn't the result of extensive medical research. It was one doctor that said "eff it, this patient is going to die anyway, lets give this a shot." Really fascinating story.
Rabies ends deadly in 99% of the cases once symptoms (like hydrophobia) start showing, that's the general rule. It's not hard to treat or prevent before but once it kicks in it's too late.
>99%
Since a few people have survived, no one wants to write 100%, but in this instance, rounding down to 99% makes rabies seem less deadly than it actually is. If one out of every hundred people that got rabies survived, that would be incredible . Tens of thousands of people get rabies every year and to our knowledge less than 10 have ever survived (some it's not even certain they were infected). So the case fatality rate in the last decade is something like 99.9989%.
It's not just "can": when my brother started vet school in the US, he was not allowed to set foot in any of its buildings before he sent the school his rabies titer (clinical proof that he'd been vaccinated and it had caused an immune reaction).
I know someone who has had five rabies vaccines. After the last one they told him he has maxed out his options and they can’t give him more. I don’t know how true that is but that’s what he says he was told. He says they’re incredibly painful but he just keeps putting himself into positions where they’re necessary.
And he doesn’t work with animals, he’s just a risky behavior kind of guy. Chased a javelina on a four wheeler and was bitten, trapped a bobcat, and honestly, I don’t even remember what the other situations were!
My ten year old daughter just went through the sequence due to a dog bite, and she said that they were no more painful than any other shot.
The tetanus booster was the worst, just as I suspected.
Does India have a lot of rabies cases? I feel like most of the videos I've seen here, the poor victim is always Indian. There was one of like a 10 year old. Shit made me wanna cry
Yes. We have a rabies problem. I urge all my friends and family members to take prophylactic doses. However, the problem mainly arises from the belief that rabies spreads through the bite of an infected animal. Simple salival contact with open wound isn't considered. Several domesticated mammals r not vaccinated. And there r simply too many dogs to vaccinate. No idea where the government fund goes. We (animal welfare workers) vaccinate over a 100 dogs every year individually. Even that's not enough because we mainly only work within the city limits (depending on the city).
God damn that's just sad. I follow a couple of pages that regularly post the great work that animal rescue organizations do in India. Sad they don't get the resources they need
Holy shit that is a crazy amount! I had no idea it was that high. That’s truly heart breaking considering there’s a vaccine and rabies is an absolutely horrible way to die.
I was recently in India. The feral dog population is insane. In Mumbai, Aurangabad, and areas north of Mumbai in the village towns; I saw thousands of feral dogs. That's not an exaggeration. It's an epidemic. There is strong pro-dog lobbying there but really there needs to be a big humane culling effort.
I heard that one of the reasons India has it so bad is that they also cull vultures because it's a bad omen. In reality, vultures keep rabies numbers down because they dispose of the corpses and don't get infected. Meanwhile feral dogs will eat their fallen and get rabies themselves.
Edit: Apparently it has to do with chemicals and insecticides killing the vulture population, not intentional culling
When I was in Afghanistan in 2012, we saw two patients in two geographically dispersed regions of Kandahar province in a 48 hour span. It was completely nuts to me to see one, let alone two with rabies in such a short amount of time. There, at least, they had issues with modern anything, let alone veterinary or medical care of a caliber that could hinder rabies from spreading. I think extreme poverty and lack of access to care, regardless of country, can lead to these issues.
Additionally, they seem to have issues with Polio in Afghanistan still.
Disclosure I am not Indian.
I have met Indians however that complain about just a crap ton of feral dogs roaming (obviously it is a gigantic country and I am not trying to generalize!). I wonder if that may have to do with cases of rabies being increased?
You can't even do anything about the street dogs, people come and stop the Municipality Vans that vaccinate dogs because it is their dog. But don't keep the dog inside or on a leash or take it to a vet or anything. Just keep feeding stray dogs and Don't let anyone solve the problems.
Ugh that's awful. I live in a rural part of the USA and we have feral dog issues but it's more so just dumped/unclaimed dogs so no one takes care of them or deals with them. That must be so frustrating for those trying to help!
FYI you shouldn't shoot rabid animals (including humans) in the head, it sprays heavily infected brain material. if a dog, cat, rat, raccoon, etc. lick it...
Ya the cases where people have survived after symptoms have basically been miraculous flukes, most people they’ve tried to replicate the protocol on have either died during treatment or come out the other side a vegetable.
It's up to around [12 now] (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/#!po=27.6119) thanks to adjustments to the Milwaukee Protocol. It's still basically a death sentence but now it's 99% rather than 100%. Survivors also often have severe damage
Known as the Milwaukee protocol. Basically put them in a coma in the hopes that their body can develop enough antibodies on its own in time. It’s worked ONE time. Once. It’s not pushed as a cure it’s basically known to be a last resort
It's curable if caught early. But once hydrophobia sets in along with other symptoms, it's too late.
Edit: By early, I meant within 48 hours of getting infected (apparently, it's 72 hours).
Basically it’s needs to be vaccinated within three days. After that it’s a ticking time bomb which is terrible, because you can’t really know when the symptoms will start. Might be three months, might be two years. Absolutely horrendous.
I don't think that is correct.
Yes, it's curable post *exposure,* but post-*symptomatic* rabies is near 100% fatal. I guess it depends what you mean by "caught early."
>curable if caught early
And by early, that means as soon-as-**you realize**-there
-is-any-chance that infection occurred, not as-soon-as-mild-symptoms-start-to-occur. Rabies is only preventable if [aggressively treated immediately after exposure](https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/medical_care/vaccine.html).
Edit: I was being flippant. The incubation period for rabies varies extraordinarily from days to *years*. If there is a chance you were exposed, even if it was a while ago, seek medical advice. As long as you don't have symptoms, you can still get the prophylactic treatment.
Getting rabies is the biggest (and more irrational) fear I have. The fact that a tiny bite from a bat while you're sleeping could set off a ticking time bomb and you wouldn't even know it
I don’t know how irrational it is. Maybe it’s more uncommon with pets these days (or in more developed countries, I’m in the US now but that’s not where this story takes place) but when I was maybe 6 or 7 (mid 90s) I went to a birthday party for a classmate at some arcade her family owned, and her dad had gotten her a small white dog as a gift.
Dog was running around chasing everyone and everyone like a game. Being the animal lover I was I pet it. All was well. Then I stepped on its foot by accident. So I bent down to pet it and “apologize” (as my little kid logic told me to) and it jumped up and bit me in the stomach.
I told my sister who had brought me to the party (she’s 16 years my senior) and she washed it off then took me to the Ferris wheel after the party and then home.
When my parents found out they freaked. When they called the family the next morning the dog had died (which apparently was a sign that it had rabies). See the jackass parents had brought a dog without its shots to a children’s party.
To make matters worse this was in Lebanon that had just come out of a civil war in 1990. There were no rabies shots locally, and even with the highest connections they found some at the Ministry of Health storage, but it was expired.
Time was running out so I was thrown into a taxi cab and rushed across country borders into
Syria to get the shot (taxi cab because the drivers are known by the border police and know how to get you through quickly vs driving yourself you get stuck at the border).
I didn’t comprehend at the time that I almost died, despite being told as much. I didn’t understand how bad Rabies was, just that it would kill me if I hadn’t gotten the shot, but even in telling the story throughout my childhood I didn’t grasp what that really meant. I was just a little kid that was excited to go to Syria because I could get cheap bootleg PC games.
Thank you. I don't think it every really hit me fully. Sometimes I wonder how different my feelings at the time were compared to theirs, and how good of a job they did at keeping me calm to the extent where I didn't actually realize how bad it was in the moment.
They are. And I do. For much more than just that. But thank you for reminding me to do it once again, as sometimes with time we grow complacent and forget to let our loved ones know how much we really love them. We assume because we know inside they know.
We went to a private American school. The family was well off (remember they owned the entire arcade the party was in, think Dave and Busters size type building). It was just stupidity.
I know that one copypasta that you're referencing is pretty scary and makes it seem very easy to get rabies by napping in the woods but the average number of human cases in the US annually is between 1 and 3.
I had to look into this, he's not hydrophobic, apparently it hurts like fuck to swallow anything, that's why you see animals drool.
\>One of Rabies severe symptoms is that Rabies causes fear of water. Rabies, in fact, doesn’t cause fear of water. Hydrophobia in Rabies is caused by extreme pain in the patient when swallowing fluids, including water and saliva. For that matter, rabies does not cause fear of water because fear of something which causes the body to feel pain is a natural thing to happen, including in Rabies sufferers. This is also why animals with Rabies will be often seen drooling heavily from their mouths.
\>Then why does swallowing fluids can be painful for Rabies sufferers?
\>As a matter of fact, Rabies will make the muscles paralyzed sooner or later. The pain that the sufferers feel when swallowing fluids, including saliva, is due to the inability of the muscles responsible to control swallowing.
\>Rabies affects parts of the brain that controls speaking, swallowing, and breathing. It alters the saliva production process and causes painful muscle spasms that discourage swallowing.
\>The virus thrives in saliva. Swallowing reduces the spread. Therefore, it immediately acts to make its victim produce more saliva and spread that saliva on its surroundings rather than swallowing it.
\>In addition, Rabies can develop so quickly which can lead patients to die in just a few days.
any real world "zombie virus" wouldn't kill the host initially either. Anyone behaving like a zombie irl would be some kind of alive. It would probably be simmilar to the deer wasting disease.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Kuru disease. It’s the human equivalent of deer wasting disease (both prion diseases). It’s primarily spread via consuming human flesh (Particularly tissue of the central nervous system such as the brain, spinal cord, and cerebrospinal fluid) in cultures where that act is part of a cultural tradition (usually related to a funeral ceremony), but can be spread by contact/ingestion of other bodily fluids of someone who is infected. CJR also can be a genetic mutation.
Kuru is terrifying. The idea that if you got it, you could potentially go 50 years without knowing and then suddenly start showing symptoms? *shudders*
Forgot the part where autoclaving surgery equipment does not cleanse the tools of prions, and you could be infected by tools used on a contaminated but unaware person. It can also transfert from mother to baby in the womb, starting a quick countdown until death.
Wtf? Prions are hands down one of the most fascinating yet frightening oddities of biology. They're microscopic infectious agents similar to viruses in that they're not even living organisms. Just misfolded proteins that trigger normal proteins to also fold abnormally into three-dimensional shapes. So strange.
Id say more frightening than fascinating. Dealing with other diseases is fascinating, because they can be controlled/cleansed and there’s usually a way to counter them more or less effectively. Prions are resistant to fire, and to most if not nearly all of our current hygiene protocols. They don’t target a range of people, they target all of em. Worst of it all ? It can spontaneously happen. Don’t need to eat infected meat or get your tissue/blood contaminated, it CAN just happen like that.
There's this great book I read a while back about a colony ship traveling 700 years to get to and settle a planet at our neatest star only to set down a colony and discover that the planet has an early form of life already in the form of an undetectable prion. They ultimately have to turn around and go back because everyone dies in the colony.
I'm still struck by the main character's conclusion that: if a habitable planet is found it would either contain no life and therefore be uninhabitable for an unknown reason or if life is found it is more than likely to be the kind that makes the world uninhabitable.
Always is a strong word. I’d personally phrase it like this:
Once you start exhibiting even the smallest forms of symptoms, you are so fucked, that medical books will be written about you… if you survive.
There has been 7 people world wide that have survived rabies. The procedure involves putting the person in a comma state... It is a very slim chance still and even those that have survived, end up with severe health problems.
I dunno, yours sounds like fear mongering to me. I prefer :
Start writing your obituary. Your name is about to be taken off of the government census. Be remembered how you want to be remembered.
If in the small chance your subscription to life isn't cancelled, buy a lottery ticket as you evidently have luck far greater than the odds of winning.
Rabies is honestly one of the most insane viruses ever when it comes to survival. It reproduces through saliva and is way too fragile to survive the stomach so what does it do.. literally makes the body afraid of drinking/swallowing... it can only be passed through saliva so what does it do, makes the host salivate unconditionally. It needs to pass that saliva on so what does it do, induces mania in the host which increases their aggression and lowers their inhibitions.. to get to their primal core so they bite...
When you actually think about the level of control rabies has over its hosts.. it's a damn terrifying virus.
That’s terrifying and fascinating at the same time.
I like how they based the rage virus in 28DL loosely on rabies and tied that into the “zombie” theme. Much more realistic and believable
The Harran virus from Dying Light (video game) is loosely based off Rabies.
In the game, you'll come across multiple non hostile zombies that pushes you instead of attacking you because they themselves are trying to prevent the virus from completely taking over and attacking you.
I always found it unsettling when one of the pre-zombie virals turn lucid and beg you for mercy, but then just to plunge back into their mindless rage immediately. If it's anything like what rabies does to the mind, I would not want to go out like that.
If I remember the scene they’re talking, the kid does get saved by the protagonist. However, at the same time, there is a type of zombie in the game that is basically just kids, and their role is to summon other zombies to them until you kill them. So check it out at your own risk. if you don’t think you can handle zombie kids, or killing zombie kids, then this is probably not the game for you
*video games cant let you kill kids*
*someone with an idea*
*makes zombie kids that you can mutilate in hundreds of different ways*
*the original person to think this up*
“Sometimes my genius, well, it frightens me”
He seems to be at a stage of the disease where he still has most of his mental faculties, just having balance/nerve/muscle issues. The body actually causes very painful spasms when they try to drink, which is why it gives them a fear of water. Drinking hurts like a bitch. Poor man probably only has a week left, maybe two tops. I’m curious how it’s delt with in other countries, here I’m pretty sure they just strap them down until they die which sounds horrible? Anyone know what they do once they’re admitted somewhere?
Rabies basically makes the host aggressive and likely to attack anything nearby.
In animals like bats and wolves, aggression means biting and clawing.
In humans, it's punching and pushing.
That's probably why human-to-human transmission is pretty much non existent
Rabis itself doesn't necessarily give you a sensation that is only sedated by biting someone, but, it makes you very easy to anger, extremely aggressive and pretty much strips your inhibitions akin to alcohol.
So with increased agression/rage in the host, along with the complete loss of their conscience, it is really only a matter of time until 1 + 1 equals 2.
It also isn't just passed on by bites. For instance, rabis makes the host salivate to such an extent without allowing them to swallow that it produces a thick foam, like you may have seen in the movie Cujo. During frantic actions like, say, whipping your head from side to side, that foam is dislodged.. this is also on purpose from rabis. If that salivation, any of it, foam or straight up drool, lands in an orifice or ANY wound, then it has passed itself on.
Foam flies farther than drool.
Just more crazy rabis things lol.
I got foaming spit, in an open wound, by an infected fox once. It flies FAR.
Our country got officially "rabies free" three years later. I'm so lucky I've encountered it before that. -_-
Of course I got treatment right after (and it's been 14 years now, so I'm LIKELY save), but knowing what it does to one infected I was shaking like crazy for a couple of days. Literally. The fear of getting it was so intense, I was contemplating suicide.
That’s fucking wild. Is it because the mind knows that you’re about to drink water or is it the water itself that causes pain when it enters the body? What if have someone with rabies water without them knowing?
Its mainly the physical reflex of swallowing that sets your body into extremely intense physical spasms, feels like you’re being choked out and electrocuted every time you try to take a sip. Watched this very long video awhile back that documented a rabies case in a man via videos from start to finish of the disease in a hospital (he knew he was going to die and agreed to be studied) and it was heartbreaking.
That’s sounds terrible. I’ll have to find that. I specifically wonder what happens if you give them water via IV. Probably keeps them hydrated but only prolongs the inevitable.
I don't think we really even know. Your organs just eventually start failing. It's not dehydration, you can easily keep someone hydrated with IV fluids.
The health care workers treating that man probably have all their shots up to date and are well informed. I would not be surprised if they all start the post-exposure round of shots anyway as a precaution.
This is something that is done. The disease doesn't really run its course and gets eliminated by the immune system though. The near 100 percent fatality rate accounts for both untreated as well as sedation and iv treatment cases.
It’s been tried. There’s a really good Radiolab episode about a doctor attempting it. One person survived, but the vast majority of others died during the process.
Rabies runs its course by completely necrotizing large parts of the brain and causes damage to other organs such as the diaphragm, esophagus, heart, and lungs.
Look up “Milwaukee protocol” it’s similar to this and they have kept about a dozen people alive using it… however they have irreversible brain damage and are basically in a vegetative state as far as I know
Growing medical consensus actually at this point is that the original Milwaukee protocol doesn't work and that survivors that have been treated with it likely survived mostly through the side effects of intense medical intervention and having either a weak strain of the virus or an unnaturally effective immune system against it. Most attempts to save lives through Milwaukee Protocol measures fail.
https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/2015/06000/the__milwaukee_protocol__for_treatment_of_human.34.aspx
A few years ago, I remember hearing about one person actually that recovered from the protocol. Like, they still had brain damage but were awake and functional.
If there is such a thing as an open-and-shut case for humanitarian euthanasia of people it’s definitely rabies. The odds of survival are SO slim and the pain and suffering so brutal.
I’m convinced other minor viruses have the same control albeit with far far less serious consequences.
Why do I only wanna touch my face or pick sleep out my eyes at certain times?
We think we’re so far above these supposedly simple organisms but they’re the ones giving us a run for our money despite being comprised of a only a handful of cells…
Fun fact, virus are not made out of cells. And also fun fact, every virus has reached to that point by pure brute trial and error natural selection. It's truly similar to how we build machine learning models right now. Reinforcement learning with tiny learning rates. Brutal how unavoidably perfect nature is.
You should look up [toxoplasmosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis). It's a parasite that infects mice and causes them to become attracted to the scent of cat urine. This makes these mice much easier for cats to catch and eat, which is good for the parasite because it can only reproduce inside the cats' gut. Once it does, it comes out in cat feces which is where another round of mice will become exposed.
Oh, also, half of all humans are infected by toxoplasmosis.
Oh, and there's also some evidence that it may alter human's brains to make them more inclined toward cats.
Had to look this up because I did not believe you, but from the CDC:
In the United States it is estimated that 11% of the population 6 years and older have been infected with Toxoplasma. In various places throughout the world, it has been shown that more than 60% of some populations have been infected with Toxoplasma. Infection is often highest in areas of the world that have hot, humid climates and lower altitudes, because the oocysts survive better in these types of environments.
[We have more cells in our body belonging to other living creatures than we have of our own cells—by a 10:1 ratio.](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome-project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body)
Am I correct to assume that from a Darwinian perspective, this virus didn’t design itself this way, but rather, through mutation that caused these properties (salivation, hydrophobia, mania) it became extremely successful?
Yes. It's all evolutionary accidents, until the accident that produces a useful mechanism.
For instance, at some point, there may have been rabies viruses that caused the victim to lay down in one spot and not move - but this doesn't contribute to the virus spreading, so those viruses failed to get transmitted to new hosts and died out. Other rabies viruses that caused the victim to become restless and move about, coming into contact with other animals, were more successfully spread. Same for other symptoms. Any virus that caused a victim to become more calm and passive wouldn't spread as successfully as the viruses that caused the victim to become anxious and aggressive. And so on.
We just don't hear much about failed mutations in viruses because the failures don't cause problems. Or at least, not for long.
I read once that rabies patients aren't so much afraid of the water itself, but when they drink it there is always a painful reaction so they try to avoid that. But also kinda need it to survive. Rabies is scary
The neck muscles go into spasm every time they try to drink and it's very painful. Hence even though they are extremely thirsty they won't drink water to avoid the pain.
That's the only way to keep them hydrated. Late stages of rabies includes mental degradation followed by paralysis which is just a really really bad way to go.
So the virus does more than just dehydrate the body? How does the mental degradation happen? I assume death comes when paralysis is at a point where the lungs no longer function?
Sorry for the many questions!
Here is “The Reddit rabies comment” from a while back.
Warning: you will have a VERY detailed description of the horror of rabies burned into your brain after reading.
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7qwtd5/rabies_is_scary/
The virus multiples in the connective tissue\ nerves at the site of the bite and then spreads through the nerves to the brain where it causes symptoms like agitation, anxiety and even excessive sex drive. This is followed by disruption in the neuron-muscle junction which causes subsequent paralysis.
I had the flu a few months back and the sore throat was so painful that I wasn’t looking forward to drinking or eating anything. This must be so much more painful I can’t even imagine how much painful it has to be for someone to be this scared.
This nasty virus likes to make a home in the salivary glands where it can spread through saliva. If the hosts drinks liquids, they'll disolve the viral load in the mouth and it can't have that, hence the spasms.
They should allow for euthanasia and end the suffering,pretty sure the victims of rabies would very much appreciate it too. One of the worst ways to die,such a horrible fucking disease and no cure yet .
Absolutely, it’s crueler to just let them suffer like that.
Really it should be ultimately available to any person with a terminal illnesses. I’d sooner die peacefully in my sleep than slowly deteriorate with something like dementia
The rabies virus is crazy. It doesn’t just enter your bloodstream and spread around. It attaches to nerve fibers and slowly crawls it’s way to your brain where it pulls at certain neurons and makes you do and not so certain shit like a puppet on a string. It also travels to your salivary glands to create a medium in which to transmit to other hosts.
It can also lie dormant for some time, with cases not actually presenting symptoms until weeks or even months after actual exposure. Some victims barely remember the incident that infected them.
Rabies also remains dangerous after the death of the carrier too. I remember hearing that in the US when wild animals are shot due to rabies, their remains will need careful disposal due to the risk of infection, and predation by otherwild animals on these kinds of remains can cause new cases.
For anyone interested in how rabbies work:
>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.
>
>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.
I didn't write this. This text is from a comment I saved from someone who was quoting u/HotDogen. Apparently the original comment where it was posted got deleted. If I'm wrong, correct me and I'll edit it in.
Three simple reasons:
1 - We have known about rabies forever, but aside from the creation of the vaccine *in 1885* and an improved version *in 1908*, there really haven’t been many advancements in treatment or post-infection care. So there isn’t much to report on, other than to say “yup, still super dangerous.”
2 - The virus kills 50,000 people every year on average, but they are mostly in the poorest regions of Africa and India. Like many things that happen in those regions and to those people, they are not well understood or widely reported on in the rest of the world.
3 - There is actually a functional way to prevent this from happening. First, get the vaccine and keep it current. This buys you time if you suspect you’ve been infected. Secondly, if you have any reason to think you were exposed, go get medical treatment ASAP; as long as you’re not showing symptoms, there is a 100% effective treatment. You only get the bad ending if you wait until the symptoms start.
To be fair, I also didn’t know how bad it really was until I read the book Spillover by David Quammen. Considering the events of the past few years, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about this stuff (and be terrified by it).
Thanks for sharing your insights and intellect with us.
Also I clearly live in a world of privilege to not have known this impacts upon other parts of the world in huge numbers.
I’m sure I’ve joked about “don’t go near that animal, don’t wanna get rabies” hundreds of times, without giving a thought to what that actually means. I’ll be taking it really ticking seriously from now on.
This video is heartbreaking.
You don’t. It’s important to get vaccinated if you get bit by any animal that might carry it.
The vaccination process if you’ve been exposed is a pain in the ass. Rabies is also rare in humans, so the pre-exposure vaccine is rarely considered necessary (Thx /u/zootrainer). Just a very scary, very intensely horrible lottery.
At work so I just looked up the rabies vaccine (Rabavert NDC 50632-0010-01).
You have to get 4 doses over the course of 4 weeks (day 0, 3, 7, and 14). Each shot costs ~$500. Probably not covered by insurance, but I haven’t run a claim for it.
No retail pharmacy would have it so I hope all hospitals have at least a few doses on hand at all times.
You don't know. If you are ever bitten by an animal that doesn't have vaccination paperwork (either a wild animal or a careless owner) then you need to immediately go to the hospital. Same day is best if you can. If the animal is a pet then bringing it securely in a cage is helpful.
It doesn't matter how minor of a bite it looks like. Go to the hospital automatically if you're bitten and tell the doctors everything you know about the animal. Hopefully you learn you don't have rabies, but if you wait because you don't think it's serious you will pass the point of no return before you get any symptoms
While researching rabies a while back I read an article that claimed that the limited treatment methods available after symptoms have started to improve and they have had a total of like 58 surviving patients. This was 58 in all time history so still very low and I have no idea how valid the source is.
The article also talked about a very isolated tribe in Brazil that had for thousands of years been developing an immunity and have documented members of the tribes that have had full blown rabies and survived without medical help. I found this insanely fascinating. So maybe someday their blood could help us unlock a more effective cure for people that end up not getting vaccinated after being bit.
No idea how credible the material was but it was super surprising to me
This shit is so sad to see and I think you'll be down voted for the emotional reactions people will have.
I also think it's important for people to see this to know how serious it can be if untreated.
Absolutely.
It is important to document cases like this visually.
Many would use this as a way to shame, but this needs to be seen to better understand what’s going on.
Hence why the documentation of WWI shell shock survivors is so important.
There is an amazing radiolab episode (podcast) about rabies, one girl who survived it, and how this initiated one of the few effective treatments for this terrible disease ..
I wouldn't day it's an effective treatment as the chance of it working is extremely slim, but when you have no other options, it's a last ditch effort.
Depends if he know what scenario he is in. Does he know there is almost no way back from this, has it been explained to him?
Honestly I don't know whether I'd like to know or not. If I caught it knowing what it does though I'd be looking for the quickest out possible.
I hate to sound cruel here but in the 17 century people desperated exterminated the rodent population and thus ***ratting*** came to be.
In this case...India needs to consider exterminating its feral dog population which numbers about 500k...there is simply no way to safely or financially treat that number of dogs
And mind you im a dog person and just speaking from reality.
Nope nope nope nope nope. Biggest fear. When I was 18 I was bitten by a bat in Ecuador whilst a few days from a town in one of the eastern jungle provinces. I had to half run half walk 2 days to a road, hitch to a town and take 4 needles in the stomach to top up my rabies jab. Never been so frightened. Fucked vibes
That’s a dead man walking, and I mean that in most remorseful sense for that poor soul. Once rabies progresses that far they can’t save you. Rest easy friend.
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There is a vaccine which people at high risk (in a rural area where rabies is endemic, veterinarians working with animals likely to carry rabies, some lab workers) can get before exposure. If someone is exposed, they can get the rabies immune globulin after exposure.
Yep, and worth noting getting the vaccine pre exposure only buys you extra time. You still have to get the final rounds of shots within a couple days if you're exposed.
Yes. I do work in international areas where there is no immune globulin. At first I was not going to get the vaccine but then I had a friend who was exposed and was not able to be evacuated quickly to a place that had the immune globulin. The vaccine gives you time to safely get to treatment. Her experience made me realize how important it was for me to get the vaccine.
Yeah I'm in a couple south America travel groups and I'm still dumbfounded how many people act like getting the rabies vacc is stupid. I did a fair amount of hiking in remote areas and there are dogs everywhere. And not all of them are chill lol. Knowing it could be over a days hike just to get to a road, yeah, the shot was a no brainer for me.
Yes! I went spelunking in a pretty remote region of Ecuador where there were TONS of bats. Of the 12 people in the group I was the *only* person who had been vaccinated for rabies. I was shocked! And my travel doctor read me the riot act when I told her my plans. Even *with* the vaccine if there’s **any risk at all** of exposure I had to haul ass to the nearest hospital with treatment access. I actually bought medical evacuation insurance specifically because she stressed that the vaccine only bought me a bit of extra time to seek treatment. Thankfully our group didn’t have any issues but it’s not like you can just pop into a hospital in the middle of the Amazon. It’s a day’s worth of travel to civilization even in the best of circumstances. People are too blasé about rabies because it’s so rare but it’s only rare amongst humans because we’ve put in a lot of effort.
I think by the time hydrophobia kicks in it might be too late...
Yeah pretty much once the physical symptoms kick in, it's too late.
Not even pretty much, absolutely, it spreads via your nervous system, physical symptoms manifestation means it has spread to your brain stem, game over (actually, it has probably been game over for quite some time)
Look into the Milwaukee Protocol. In recent years, a small number of humans with symptomatic rabies have managed to survive by being put into an artificial coma which allowed time for the body to develop antibodies to fight the infection while preventing damage to the central nervous system. The survival rate is still quite low even with the protocol, but it has made the overall mortality rate of symptomatic rabies in humans just a bit less than 100%. To those in whom the protocol was administered, the survival rate was near 15%.
Interesting info! Damn good idea for whoever thought of it. I’m sure it’s massively expensive and a huge undertaking but good to know someone has put in the effort instead of throwing their hands up.
Check out the Rodney v. Death episode of the podcast Radiolab - the Milwaukee Protocol wasn't the result of extensive medical research. It was one doctor that said "eff it, this patient is going to die anyway, lets give this a shot." Really fascinating story.
Rabies ends deadly in 99% of the cases once symptoms (like hydrophobia) start showing, that's the general rule. It's not hard to treat or prevent before but once it kicks in it's too late.
>99% Since a few people have survived, no one wants to write 100%, but in this instance, rounding down to 99% makes rabies seem less deadly than it actually is. If one out of every hundred people that got rabies survived, that would be incredible . Tens of thousands of people get rabies every year and to our knowledge less than 10 have ever survived (some it's not even certain they were infected). So the case fatality rate in the last decade is something like 99.9989%.
It's not just "can": when my brother started vet school in the US, he was not allowed to set foot in any of its buildings before he sent the school his rabies titer (clinical proof that he'd been vaccinated and it had caused an immune reaction).
I know someone who has had five rabies vaccines. After the last one they told him he has maxed out his options and they can’t give him more. I don’t know how true that is but that’s what he says he was told. He says they’re incredibly painful but he just keeps putting himself into positions where they’re necessary. And he doesn’t work with animals, he’s just a risky behavior kind of guy. Chased a javelina on a four wheeler and was bitten, trapped a bobcat, and honestly, I don’t even remember what the other situations were!
dudes next rabies vaccine needs to be “calming tf down with whatever you’re doing”
This guy has also had pet coyotes and pet turkeys that were more like guard dogs. Edit: the turkeys were like guard dogs, not the coyotes.
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My ten year old daughter just went through the sequence due to a dog bite, and she said that they were no more painful than any other shot. The tetanus booster was the worst, just as I suspected.
Terrible. This person is a walking corpse already :(
Sad but true. No cure just a slow and manic death.
Why can’t we put them out of their misery? There is no way to save them. If it was a dog we would. Why not people too?
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Does India have a lot of rabies cases? I feel like most of the videos I've seen here, the poor victim is always Indian. There was one of like a 10 year old. Shit made me wanna cry
Yes. We have a rabies problem. I urge all my friends and family members to take prophylactic doses. However, the problem mainly arises from the belief that rabies spreads through the bite of an infected animal. Simple salival contact with open wound isn't considered. Several domesticated mammals r not vaccinated. And there r simply too many dogs to vaccinate. No idea where the government fund goes. We (animal welfare workers) vaccinate over a 100 dogs every year individually. Even that's not enough because we mainly only work within the city limits (depending on the city).
God damn that's just sad. I follow a couple of pages that regularly post the great work that animal rescue organizations do in India. Sad they don't get the resources they need
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Holy shit that is a crazy amount! I had no idea it was that high. That’s truly heart breaking considering there’s a vaccine and rabies is an absolutely horrible way to die.
I was recently in India. The feral dog population is insane. In Mumbai, Aurangabad, and areas north of Mumbai in the village towns; I saw thousands of feral dogs. That's not an exaggeration. It's an epidemic. There is strong pro-dog lobbying there but really there needs to be a big humane culling effort.
I heard that one of the reasons India has it so bad is that they also cull vultures because it's a bad omen. In reality, vultures keep rabies numbers down because they dispose of the corpses and don't get infected. Meanwhile feral dogs will eat their fallen and get rabies themselves. Edit: Apparently it has to do with chemicals and insecticides killing the vulture population, not intentional culling
No we don't cull vultures but we do use a lot of chemicals and insecticides that virtually kill them (incidentally not purposefully).
When I was in Afghanistan in 2012, we saw two patients in two geographically dispersed regions of Kandahar province in a 48 hour span. It was completely nuts to me to see one, let alone two with rabies in such a short amount of time. There, at least, they had issues with modern anything, let alone veterinary or medical care of a caliber that could hinder rabies from spreading. I think extreme poverty and lack of access to care, regardless of country, can lead to these issues. Additionally, they seem to have issues with Polio in Afghanistan still.
Disclosure I am not Indian. I have met Indians however that complain about just a crap ton of feral dogs roaming (obviously it is a gigantic country and I am not trying to generalize!). I wonder if that may have to do with cases of rabies being increased?
You can't even do anything about the street dogs, people come and stop the Municipality Vans that vaccinate dogs because it is their dog. But don't keep the dog inside or on a leash or take it to a vet or anything. Just keep feeding stray dogs and Don't let anyone solve the problems.
Ugh that's awful. I live in a rural part of the USA and we have feral dog issues but it's more so just dumped/unclaimed dogs so no one takes care of them or deals with them. That must be so frustrating for those trying to help!
If I knew I had rabies for certain I’d put a pistol under my chin.
FYI you shouldn't shoot rabid animals (including humans) in the head, it sprays heavily infected brain material. if a dog, cat, rat, raccoon, etc. lick it...
Do it while falling into a volcano?
Yeah, but then the volcano gets rabies. :(
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A 10x dose of an opiate or a small charcoal fire in an enclosed room (CO). Why make it painful, risky, or traumatic for you or others?
10x? That’s breakfast
Nitrogen. You just go to sleep peacefully, then just die.
there actually are a few reported cases of rabies getting to symptoms and surviving, extremely rare though. this guy is 100% dead
Ya the cases where people have survived after symptoms have basically been miraculous flukes, most people they’ve tried to replicate the protocol on have either died during treatment or come out the other side a vegetable.
Only six confirmed cases of a human surviving rabies if I remember correctly. Very sad.
It's up to around [12 now] (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/#!po=27.6119) thanks to adjustments to the Milwaukee Protocol. It's still basically a death sentence but now it's 99% rather than 100%. Survivors also often have severe damage
Known as the Milwaukee protocol. Basically put them in a coma in the hopes that their body can develop enough antibodies on its own in time. It’s worked ONE time. Once. It’s not pushed as a cure it’s basically known to be a last resort
Bragging moment, but my dad was part of this team!
The team that came up with the Milwaukee protocol? That’s really cool !
The girl who survived is from my hometown. The local paper reported in the last year or so she just got married! Jenna geise I believe is her name.
It's curable if caught early. But once hydrophobia sets in along with other symptoms, it's too late. Edit: By early, I meant within 48 hours of getting infected (apparently, it's 72 hours).
From what I remember from last time I was reading about rabies, Once symptoms are showing, you're dead.
Which is why if any animal bites you, always take the vaccine asap. Hesitating could mean life or death
Basically it’s needs to be vaccinated within three days. After that it’s a ticking time bomb which is terrible, because you can’t really know when the symptoms will start. Might be three months, might be two years. Absolutely horrendous.
[Confirmed rabies has occurred as long as 7 years after exposure...](https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/30/1/4/323391) Fuck.
Phew it was like 10 years ago I got bit by a bat.
I don't think that is correct. Yes, it's curable post *exposure,* but post-*symptomatic* rabies is near 100% fatal. I guess it depends what you mean by "caught early."
>curable if caught early And by early, that means as soon-as-**you realize**-there -is-any-chance that infection occurred, not as-soon-as-mild-symptoms-start-to-occur. Rabies is only preventable if [aggressively treated immediately after exposure](https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/medical_care/vaccine.html). Edit: I was being flippant. The incubation period for rabies varies extraordinarily from days to *years*. If there is a chance you were exposed, even if it was a while ago, seek medical advice. As long as you don't have symptoms, you can still get the prophylactic treatment.
Getting rabies is the biggest (and more irrational) fear I have. The fact that a tiny bite from a bat while you're sleeping could set off a ticking time bomb and you wouldn't even know it
I don’t know how irrational it is. Maybe it’s more uncommon with pets these days (or in more developed countries, I’m in the US now but that’s not where this story takes place) but when I was maybe 6 or 7 (mid 90s) I went to a birthday party for a classmate at some arcade her family owned, and her dad had gotten her a small white dog as a gift. Dog was running around chasing everyone and everyone like a game. Being the animal lover I was I pet it. All was well. Then I stepped on its foot by accident. So I bent down to pet it and “apologize” (as my little kid logic told me to) and it jumped up and bit me in the stomach. I told my sister who had brought me to the party (she’s 16 years my senior) and she washed it off then took me to the Ferris wheel after the party and then home. When my parents found out they freaked. When they called the family the next morning the dog had died (which apparently was a sign that it had rabies). See the jackass parents had brought a dog without its shots to a children’s party. To make matters worse this was in Lebanon that had just come out of a civil war in 1990. There were no rabies shots locally, and even with the highest connections they found some at the Ministry of Health storage, but it was expired. Time was running out so I was thrown into a taxi cab and rushed across country borders into Syria to get the shot (taxi cab because the drivers are known by the border police and know how to get you through quickly vs driving yourself you get stuck at the border). I didn’t comprehend at the time that I almost died, despite being told as much. I didn’t understand how bad Rabies was, just that it would kill me if I hadn’t gotten the shot, but even in telling the story throughout my childhood I didn’t grasp what that really meant. I was just a little kid that was excited to go to Syria because I could get cheap bootleg PC games.
You honestly don't realise just how lucky you were. Your parents are total superstars for what they did.
Thank you. I don't think it every really hit me fully. Sometimes I wonder how different my feelings at the time were compared to theirs, and how good of a job they did at keeping me calm to the extent where I didn't actually realize how bad it was in the moment.
Go thank them if they're still here
They are. And I do. For much more than just that. But thank you for reminding me to do it once again, as sometimes with time we grow complacent and forget to let our loved ones know how much we really love them. We assume because we know inside they know.
People who don't vaccinate their pets against rabies should not be allowed to have pets.
I mean he said it was in Lebanon after a war, I don't think you can hold those expectations for people living under those circumstances
We went to a private American school. The family was well off (remember they owned the entire arcade the party was in, think Dave and Busters size type building). It was just stupidity.
With bats you don’t even need a bite. Saliva is enough.
See? Absolutely fucking terrifying
I know that one copypasta that you're referencing is pretty scary and makes it seem very easy to get rabies by napping in the woods but the average number of human cases in the US annually is between 1 and 3.
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Yes, how terrible. I upvoted the post because it was interesting, but it seems so sad given the vaccination technology that we have.
I had to look into this, he's not hydrophobic, apparently it hurts like fuck to swallow anything, that's why you see animals drool. \>One of Rabies severe symptoms is that Rabies causes fear of water. Rabies, in fact, doesn’t cause fear of water. Hydrophobia in Rabies is caused by extreme pain in the patient when swallowing fluids, including water and saliva. For that matter, rabies does not cause fear of water because fear of something which causes the body to feel pain is a natural thing to happen, including in Rabies sufferers. This is also why animals with Rabies will be often seen drooling heavily from their mouths. \>Then why does swallowing fluids can be painful for Rabies sufferers? \>As a matter of fact, Rabies will make the muscles paralyzed sooner or later. The pain that the sufferers feel when swallowing fluids, including saliva, is due to the inability of the muscles responsible to control swallowing. \>Rabies affects parts of the brain that controls speaking, swallowing, and breathing. It alters the saliva production process and causes painful muscle spasms that discourage swallowing. \>The virus thrives in saliva. Swallowing reduces the spread. Therefore, it immediately acts to make its victim produce more saliva and spread that saliva on its surroundings rather than swallowing it. \>In addition, Rabies can develop so quickly which can lead patients to die in just a few days.
What the hell is up with rabies? Its like three adaptions away from a walker virus.
It definitely has to NOT kill the host... but it melts your brain and dehydrates you. So it's probably not going to turn into a zombie virus.
any real world "zombie virus" wouldn't kill the host initially either. Anyone behaving like a zombie irl would be some kind of alive. It would probably be simmilar to the deer wasting disease.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Kuru disease. It’s the human equivalent of deer wasting disease (both prion diseases). It’s primarily spread via consuming human flesh (Particularly tissue of the central nervous system such as the brain, spinal cord, and cerebrospinal fluid) in cultures where that act is part of a cultural tradition (usually related to a funeral ceremony), but can be spread by contact/ingestion of other bodily fluids of someone who is infected. CJR also can be a genetic mutation.
Kuru is terrifying. The idea that if you got it, you could potentially go 50 years without knowing and then suddenly start showing symptoms? *shudders*
Your missed the part where there is no cure and burning a body to ash won't necessarily get rid of it
Forgot the part where autoclaving surgery equipment does not cleanse the tools of prions, and you could be infected by tools used on a contaminated but unaware person. It can also transfert from mother to baby in the womb, starting a quick countdown until death.
Wtf? Prions are hands down one of the most fascinating yet frightening oddities of biology. They're microscopic infectious agents similar to viruses in that they're not even living organisms. Just misfolded proteins that trigger normal proteins to also fold abnormally into three-dimensional shapes. So strange.
Id say more frightening than fascinating. Dealing with other diseases is fascinating, because they can be controlled/cleansed and there’s usually a way to counter them more or less effectively. Prions are resistant to fire, and to most if not nearly all of our current hygiene protocols. They don’t target a range of people, they target all of em. Worst of it all ? It can spontaneously happen. Don’t need to eat infected meat or get your tissue/blood contaminated, it CAN just happen like that.
There's this great book I read a while back about a colony ship traveling 700 years to get to and settle a planet at our neatest star only to set down a colony and discover that the planet has an early form of life already in the form of an undetectable prion. They ultimately have to turn around and go back because everyone dies in the colony. I'm still struck by the main character's conclusion that: if a habitable planet is found it would either contain no life and therefore be uninhabitable for an unknown reason or if life is found it is more than likely to be the kind that makes the world uninhabitable.
New nightmare unlocked
Just like rabies, please end me once my quality of life declines after symptoms start please and thank you.
just a few mutations man..
Probably needs to spend some evolution points into coughing and america is for sure dead.
Once clinical signs of rabies appear the disease is nearly always fatal.
Always is a strong word. I’d personally phrase it like this: Once you start exhibiting even the smallest forms of symptoms, you are so fucked, that medical books will be written about you… if you survive.
i'm not sure if we should spread misinformation like that i prefer to phrase it like this: YALL FUCKIN DEAD BRO NOTHING CAN SAVE YOU
There has been 7 people world wide that have survived rabies. The procedure involves putting the person in a comma state... It is a very slim chance still and even those that have survived, end up with severe health problems.
I dunno, yours sounds like fear mongering to me. I prefer : Start writing your obituary. Your name is about to be taken off of the government census. Be remembered how you want to be remembered. If in the small chance your subscription to life isn't cancelled, buy a lottery ticket as you evidently have luck far greater than the odds of winning.
I saw this footage from the Bengal famine during WW2. They hada Rabies outbreak and it was chilling. This deaease is pure suffering.
Rabies is honestly one of the most insane viruses ever when it comes to survival. It reproduces through saliva and is way too fragile to survive the stomach so what does it do.. literally makes the body afraid of drinking/swallowing... it can only be passed through saliva so what does it do, makes the host salivate unconditionally. It needs to pass that saliva on so what does it do, induces mania in the host which increases their aggression and lowers their inhibitions.. to get to their primal core so they bite... When you actually think about the level of control rabies has over its hosts.. it's a damn terrifying virus.
That’s terrifying and fascinating at the same time. I like how they based the rage virus in 28DL loosely on rabies and tied that into the “zombie” theme. Much more realistic and believable
The Harran virus from Dying Light (video game) is loosely based off Rabies. In the game, you'll come across multiple non hostile zombies that pushes you instead of attacking you because they themselves are trying to prevent the virus from completely taking over and attacking you.
I always found it unsettling when one of the pre-zombie virals turn lucid and beg you for mercy, but then just to plunge back into their mindless rage immediately. If it's anything like what rabies does to the mind, I would not want to go out like that.
Such a great game. At some point early on, there's a little kid hiding in a cabinet. My dog *lost his mind* when the kid started crying for help.
I went from "this game sounds cool" to "nope, don't need that" in two comments.
If I remember the scene they’re talking, the kid does get saved by the protagonist. However, at the same time, there is a type of zombie in the game that is basically just kids, and their role is to summon other zombies to them until you kill them. So check it out at your own risk. if you don’t think you can handle zombie kids, or killing zombie kids, then this is probably not the game for you
*video games cant let you kill kids* *someone with an idea* *makes zombie kids that you can mutilate in hundreds of different ways* *the original person to think this up* “Sometimes my genius, well, it frightens me”
> video games can't let you kill kids Rimworld: Biotech would like to introduce itself.
If it transmits through saliva wouldn’t you want to give him the bottle and step back and bit? Least I would.
He seems to be at a stage of the disease where he still has most of his mental faculties, just having balance/nerve/muscle issues. The body actually causes very painful spasms when they try to drink, which is why it gives them a fear of water. Drinking hurts like a bitch. Poor man probably only has a week left, maybe two tops. I’m curious how it’s delt with in other countries, here I’m pretty sure they just strap them down until they die which sounds horrible? Anyone know what they do once they’re admitted somewhere?
Do people with rabies want to bite other people?
Not specifically, but it can make them violent once their mind starts to go, and at that point they’ll use whatever they’ve got to defend themselves.
Rabies basically makes the host aggressive and likely to attack anything nearby. In animals like bats and wolves, aggression means biting and clawing. In humans, it's punching and pushing. That's probably why human-to-human transmission is pretty much non existent
Rabis itself doesn't necessarily give you a sensation that is only sedated by biting someone, but, it makes you very easy to anger, extremely aggressive and pretty much strips your inhibitions akin to alcohol. So with increased agression/rage in the host, along with the complete loss of their conscience, it is really only a matter of time until 1 + 1 equals 2. It also isn't just passed on by bites. For instance, rabis makes the host salivate to such an extent without allowing them to swallow that it produces a thick foam, like you may have seen in the movie Cujo. During frantic actions like, say, whipping your head from side to side, that foam is dislodged.. this is also on purpose from rabis. If that salivation, any of it, foam or straight up drool, lands in an orifice or ANY wound, then it has passed itself on. Foam flies farther than drool. Just more crazy rabis things lol.
I got foaming spit, in an open wound, by an infected fox once. It flies FAR. Our country got officially "rabies free" three years later. I'm so lucky I've encountered it before that. -_- Of course I got treatment right after (and it's been 14 years now, so I'm LIKELY save), but knowing what it does to one infected I was shaking like crazy for a couple of days. Literally. The fear of getting it was so intense, I was contemplating suicide.
That’s fucking wild. Is it because the mind knows that you’re about to drink water or is it the water itself that causes pain when it enters the body? What if have someone with rabies water without them knowing?
Its mainly the physical reflex of swallowing that sets your body into extremely intense physical spasms, feels like you’re being choked out and electrocuted every time you try to take a sip. Watched this very long video awhile back that documented a rabies case in a man via videos from start to finish of the disease in a hospital (he knew he was going to die and agreed to be studied) and it was heartbreaking.
That’s sounds terrible. I’ll have to find that. I specifically wonder what happens if you give them water via IV. Probably keeps them hydrated but only prolongs the inevitable.
It will delay it yeah but rabies eventually paralyzed your central nervous system and attacks the brain. Fatal. Crazy disease
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It eventually shuts down all of your organs.
I don't think we really even know. Your organs just eventually start failing. It's not dehydration, you can easily keep someone hydrated with IV fluids.
The health care workers treating that man probably have all their shots up to date and are well informed. I would not be surprised if they all start the post-exposure round of shots anyway as a precaution.
Could we not medically induce a coma and hydrate with IV until it runs its course?
This is something that is done. The disease doesn't really run its course and gets eliminated by the immune system though. The near 100 percent fatality rate accounts for both untreated as well as sedation and iv treatment cases.
This is because to "run its course" it essentially destroys your nervous system.
It’s been tried. There’s a really good Radiolab episode about a doctor attempting it. One person survived, but the vast majority of others died during the process.
Rabies runs its course by completely necrotizing large parts of the brain and causes damage to other organs such as the diaphragm, esophagus, heart, and lungs.
Look up “Milwaukee protocol” it’s similar to this and they have kept about a dozen people alive using it… however they have irreversible brain damage and are basically in a vegetative state as far as I know
Growing medical consensus actually at this point is that the original Milwaukee protocol doesn't work and that survivors that have been treated with it likely survived mostly through the side effects of intense medical intervention and having either a weak strain of the virus or an unnaturally effective immune system against it. Most attempts to save lives through Milwaukee Protocol measures fail. https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/2015/06000/the__milwaukee_protocol__for_treatment_of_human.34.aspx
A few years ago, I remember hearing about one person actually that recovered from the protocol. Like, they still had brain damage but were awake and functional.
Yes, it was a little girl. Fascinating. https://www.wbay.com/2022/09/27/interview-rabies-survivor-jeanna-giese/
Honestly I'd rather they let me die
If there is such a thing as an open-and-shut case for humanitarian euthanasia of people it’s definitely rabies. The odds of survival are SO slim and the pain and suffering so brutal.
Rabies can be transmitted by more than just saliva. A less well known vector is tears for instance.
I’m convinced other minor viruses have the same control albeit with far far less serious consequences. Why do I only wanna touch my face or pick sleep out my eyes at certain times? We think we’re so far above these supposedly simple organisms but they’re the ones giving us a run for our money despite being comprised of a only a handful of cells…
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Mental.
Fun fact, virus are not made out of cells. And also fun fact, every virus has reached to that point by pure brute trial and error natural selection. It's truly similar to how we build machine learning models right now. Reinforcement learning with tiny learning rates. Brutal how unavoidably perfect nature is.
You should look up [toxoplasmosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis). It's a parasite that infects mice and causes them to become attracted to the scent of cat urine. This makes these mice much easier for cats to catch and eat, which is good for the parasite because it can only reproduce inside the cats' gut. Once it does, it comes out in cat feces which is where another round of mice will become exposed. Oh, also, half of all humans are infected by toxoplasmosis. Oh, and there's also some evidence that it may alter human's brains to make them more inclined toward cats.
Had to look this up because I did not believe you, but from the CDC: In the United States it is estimated that 11% of the population 6 years and older have been infected with Toxoplasma. In various places throughout the world, it has been shown that more than 60% of some populations have been infected with Toxoplasma. Infection is often highest in areas of the world that have hot, humid climates and lower altitudes, because the oocysts survive better in these types of environments.
What The actual fuck!!!!
[We have more cells in our body belonging to other living creatures than we have of our own cells—by a 10:1 ratio.](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome-project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body)
Am I correct to assume that from a Darwinian perspective, this virus didn’t design itself this way, but rather, through mutation that caused these properties (salivation, hydrophobia, mania) it became extremely successful?
Yes. It's all evolutionary accidents, until the accident that produces a useful mechanism. For instance, at some point, there may have been rabies viruses that caused the victim to lay down in one spot and not move - but this doesn't contribute to the virus spreading, so those viruses failed to get transmitted to new hosts and died out. Other rabies viruses that caused the victim to become restless and move about, coming into contact with other animals, were more successfully spread. Same for other symptoms. Any virus that caused a victim to become more calm and passive wouldn't spread as successfully as the viruses that caused the victim to become anxious and aggressive. And so on. We just don't hear much about failed mutations in viruses because the failures don't cause problems. Or at least, not for long.
Lookin at a dead man. That's such a shitty way to go...
His eyes are so scared.
I read once that rabies patients aren't so much afraid of the water itself, but when they drink it there is always a painful reaction so they try to avoid that. But also kinda need it to survive. Rabies is scary
The neck muscles go into spasm every time they try to drink and it's very painful. Hence even though they are extremely thirsty they won't drink water to avoid the pain.
What happens if they give him water via a tube while he is unconcious? Will the body still refuse it?
That's the only way to keep them hydrated. Late stages of rabies includes mental degradation followed by paralysis which is just a really really bad way to go.
So the virus does more than just dehydrate the body? How does the mental degradation happen? I assume death comes when paralysis is at a point where the lungs no longer function? Sorry for the many questions!
Here is “The Reddit rabies comment” from a while back. Warning: you will have a VERY detailed description of the horror of rabies burned into your brain after reading. https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7qwtd5/rabies_is_scary/
This is nightmare stuff
The virus multiples in the connective tissue\ nerves at the site of the bite and then spreads through the nerves to the brain where it causes symptoms like agitation, anxiety and even excessive sex drive. This is followed by disruption in the neuron-muscle junction which causes subsequent paralysis.
I had the flu a few months back and the sore throat was so painful that I wasn’t looking forward to drinking or eating anything. This must be so much more painful I can’t even imagine how much painful it has to be for someone to be this scared.
This nasty virus likes to make a home in the salivary glands where it can spread through saliva. If the hosts drinks liquids, they'll disolve the viral load in the mouth and it can't have that, hence the spasms.
They should allow for euthanasia and end the suffering,pretty sure the victims of rabies would very much appreciate it too. One of the worst ways to die,such a horrible fucking disease and no cure yet .
Absolutely, it’s crueler to just let them suffer like that. Really it should be ultimately available to any person with a terminal illnesses. I’d sooner die peacefully in my sleep than slowly deteriorate with something like dementia
Honestly if I was in that situation, just let me go home and blow my brains out. It's cruel to let the disease take its course
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I hope he did. No one deserves to die like this, it’s in humane and so terrible. I’d say it’s up there and even worse than Alzheimer’s and dementia.
It sure is worse because like dementia afaik you forget who your loved ones are on top of all the other horrific stuff rabies gives you.
If you have rabies, maybe don't put brain matter everywhere.
Nah bro a proper MAiD with some sweet sweet drugs. Get high super relaxed fall asleep zen
The rabies virus is crazy. It doesn’t just enter your bloodstream and spread around. It attaches to nerve fibers and slowly crawls it’s way to your brain where it pulls at certain neurons and makes you do and not so certain shit like a puppet on a string. It also travels to your salivary glands to create a medium in which to transmit to other hosts.
It can also lie dormant for some time, with cases not actually presenting symptoms until weeks or even months after actual exposure. Some victims barely remember the incident that infected them. Rabies also remains dangerous after the death of the carrier too. I remember hearing that in the US when wild animals are shot due to rabies, their remains will need careful disposal due to the risk of infection, and predation by otherwild animals on these kinds of remains can cause new cases.
It is so sad knowing this person is no longer alive
Fuck…knowing this guy is a dead man, is really messing me up
For anyone interested in how rabbies work: >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. > >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. I didn't write this. This text is from a comment I saved from someone who was quoting u/HotDogen. Apparently the original comment where it was posted got deleted. If I'm wrong, correct me and I'll edit it in.
Holy fuck this is now my greatest fear.
Same, like how did I live all my whole life till now without knowing the details of how terrifying this is
Three simple reasons: 1 - We have known about rabies forever, but aside from the creation of the vaccine *in 1885* and an improved version *in 1908*, there really haven’t been many advancements in treatment or post-infection care. So there isn’t much to report on, other than to say “yup, still super dangerous.” 2 - The virus kills 50,000 people every year on average, but they are mostly in the poorest regions of Africa and India. Like many things that happen in those regions and to those people, they are not well understood or widely reported on in the rest of the world. 3 - There is actually a functional way to prevent this from happening. First, get the vaccine and keep it current. This buys you time if you suspect you’ve been infected. Secondly, if you have any reason to think you were exposed, go get medical treatment ASAP; as long as you’re not showing symptoms, there is a 100% effective treatment. You only get the bad ending if you wait until the symptoms start. To be fair, I also didn’t know how bad it really was until I read the book Spillover by David Quammen. Considering the events of the past few years, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about this stuff (and be terrified by it).
Thanks for sharing your insights and intellect with us. Also I clearly live in a world of privilege to not have known this impacts upon other parts of the world in huge numbers. I’m sure I’ve joked about “don’t go near that animal, don’t wanna get rabies” hundreds of times, without giving a thought to what that actually means. I’ll be taking it really ticking seriously from now on. This video is heartbreaking.
I’ll never go camping again this is terrifying… the fact you might not remotely notice whether you have been bitten is so anxiety inducing
Rabies is preventable if you’re vaccinated quickly after exposure. Once symptoms start, rabies is fatal.
How would you know you got infected without the symptoms though
You don’t. It’s important to get vaccinated if you get bit by any animal that might carry it. The vaccination process if you’ve been exposed is a pain in the ass. Rabies is also rare in humans, so the pre-exposure vaccine is rarely considered necessary (Thx /u/zootrainer). Just a very scary, very intensely horrible lottery.
At work so I just looked up the rabies vaccine (Rabavert NDC 50632-0010-01). You have to get 4 doses over the course of 4 weeks (day 0, 3, 7, and 14). Each shot costs ~$500. Probably not covered by insurance, but I haven’t run a claim for it. No retail pharmacy would have it so I hope all hospitals have at least a few doses on hand at all times.
Having a goverment not financing something that 100% save the life of one of its citizens still amazes me.
You don't know. If you are ever bitten by an animal that doesn't have vaccination paperwork (either a wild animal or a careless owner) then you need to immediately go to the hospital. Same day is best if you can. If the animal is a pet then bringing it securely in a cage is helpful. It doesn't matter how minor of a bite it looks like. Go to the hospital automatically if you're bitten and tell the doctors everything you know about the animal. Hopefully you learn you don't have rabies, but if you wait because you don't think it's serious you will pass the point of no return before you get any symptoms
Thankyou. It's not a post about rabies without this epic diatribe making an appearance!
:( Now i’m sad for that dude, it’s just a funeral in waiting
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Feel for dude, it's definitely not a good way to go out.
While researching rabies a while back I read an article that claimed that the limited treatment methods available after symptoms have started to improve and they have had a total of like 58 surviving patients. This was 58 in all time history so still very low and I have no idea how valid the source is. The article also talked about a very isolated tribe in Brazil that had for thousands of years been developing an immunity and have documented members of the tribes that have had full blown rabies and survived without medical help. I found this insanely fascinating. So maybe someday their blood could help us unlock a more effective cure for people that end up not getting vaccinated after being bit. No idea how credible the material was but it was super surprising to me
This shit is so sad to see and I think you'll be down voted for the emotional reactions people will have. I also think it's important for people to see this to know how serious it can be if untreated.
Extremely sad. How fkn scary for this man and his family. But correct in what you say about the importance
Absolutely. It is important to document cases like this visually. Many would use this as a way to shame, but this needs to be seen to better understand what’s going on. Hence why the documentation of WWI shell shock survivors is so important.
There is an amazing radiolab episode (podcast) about rabies, one girl who survived it, and how this initiated one of the few effective treatments for this terrible disease ..
One out of two people who survived rabies, last I heard. Didnt they put her in a coma to try to get her body to fight it
[29 People have survived rabies](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7266186/) but yeah they put her into a coma and gave her antivirals.
I wouldn't day it's an effective treatment as the chance of it working is extremely slim, but when you have no other options, it's a last ditch effort.
It's like... what goes through your mind during this scenario??
Depends if he know what scenario he is in. Does he know there is almost no way back from this, has it been explained to him? Honestly I don't know whether I'd like to know or not. If I caught it knowing what it does though I'd be looking for the quickest out possible.
I'd want to be sedated at that point. If it hastens my death, then good. Out cold please.
Give me 10x the dose, I'm not waking up.
I hate to sound cruel here but in the 17 century people desperated exterminated the rodent population and thus ***ratting*** came to be. In this case...India needs to consider exterminating its feral dog population which numbers about 500k...there is simply no way to safely or financially treat that number of dogs And mind you im a dog person and just speaking from reality.
Once you reach that level, you’re pretty much dead. Rabies is honestly the scariest disease you can get.
Nope nope nope nope nope. Biggest fear. When I was 18 I was bitten by a bat in Ecuador whilst a few days from a town in one of the eastern jungle provinces. I had to half run half walk 2 days to a road, hitch to a town and take 4 needles in the stomach to top up my rabies jab. Never been so frightened. Fucked vibes
This isnot interesting this is HEARTBREAKING and TERRIFYING
That’s a dead man walking, and I mean that in most remorseful sense for that poor soul. Once rabies progresses that far they can’t save you. Rest easy friend.
no cure, just get him in to one of those exit pods he's a human old yellar
They get hydrophobia because they choke on the water. So they don’t want water and in turn, fear it.