Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I didn't actually "see" this happen, but I did experience it, and there are a few people who know this story.
I came across someone who had prepared to do a large search around a large wooded area I had access to. I came up to him about it, and he said the family had lost a dog and was going to find it, and I offered to help. The wooded area was something like a park and had a lot of twists and turns, a lot of weird divergences and convergences. We were to call or text each other if we found the dog.
At one point, we came across one of the last places we could possibly look. One part of the path forked in one direction and the other in another direction. I took the path on the right and he took the path on the left. Part way down my path, I got a text saying he found the dog, and I thought it was a time for joy and was like "oh good". Not ten seconds later, I heard what sounded like one of the most agonizing screams I ever heard. Naturally I was startled, and it turned out the dog had rabies and it was in the active stages. I still don't know how the man is doing now or even if he made it.
If another example of something horrific is desired, there is probably something even more horrific than that hiding under everyone's nose here. I have two friends, which I call my best friends and which are the only two people I can call friends in every sense of the word, and they are avid spelunkers (the term for cave exploring, both the supervised, regulated kind and the spontaneous kind), a hobby which I mention often was taught to them by my grandfather but which I could never get into (though they have achieved a few world records with their exploration). Some crazy shit happens in cave environments, and a massive amount of complaints have piled up regarding how many of the individuals who need rescuing (both the successfully rescued and supposedly the unrescued) end up saying the last two people they saw are the two best friends of mine (who are spoken of as potentially lured certain circumstances in motion, sometimes with everyone indirectly knowing each other somehow), with the friends on the other hand never having ever needed any kind of external help for anything. They aren't said to have broken any rules in of themselves, but the idea all these people have all these tragedies they could even cite (which they then associate with my friends, as well as saying theft have also occurred) is scary to think about. Like imagine, from their point of view, witnessing the end results of so many tragedies in full horror, and somehow the thought comes to mind that none of it is an accident.
Apart from physical injuries, I believe rabies is quite preventable with a shot after being attacked?
It depends on how long you wait and where you are bitten. The further a bite is from the brain, the longer you have to live, and the larger a mammal is, the longer it takes for the rabies to develop (so, for example, a whale bitten on the tail will take almost a decade for the rabies to develop and kill it).
However, even then, the shots aren't just a one-time ordeal. You need to find a way to get a shot a day for I think twenty or so days before the rabies affects the brain. Remember that these are vaccines. There are no cures, you can only race against time to prevent it (or you can vaccinate yourself before there is any reason to fear, which is common in certain occupations).
Unless your circumstances are generous, like if you got bitten in a lucky spot with a lenient amount of rabies and then rushed immediately to the hospital, your chances of surviving are next to zero. The reason bat bites mean certain death is because they always bite on the neck, with people who don't know the signature thorn-like feeling of a bat bite not realizing they were bitten fast enough to react in time (so yeah, if you feel a thorny sensation while walking at night, call someone immediately).
You got some misinformation here
The current Post Exposure rabies Prophylaxis (PEP) regimen is definitely not "a shot a day" for 20 days
First day you get a dose of vaccine and a dose of human rabies immune globulin (HRIG)
Then you get an additional vaccine dose on days 3, 7, 14, and if you're immunocompromised you get an additional dose on day 28
And if you've previously received the rabies vaccine (for either pre- or post- exposure) you only need a booster on days 0 and 3.
And the incubation period varies, like you said location and viral load plays into it, in humans it can be as little as a week, but more commonly it's a couple months, and even up to a year. There are a lot of variables at play, and the sooner you can start PEP the better of course, but generally speaking it's usually not a "rush immediately to the hospital in an ambulance or you will die" situation. If it comes to it, you usually have at least a couple days of wiggle room to start PEP.
And no, bats don't always bite the neck. Head and neck are pretty common, they're usually pretty exposed, and bats fly so it would be kind of weird for them to bite you on the leg for example, but it's not like they're magically drawn to act out the plot of a vampire movie. It is true though that a lot of people don't recognize a bat bite for what it is.
I figured I was probably missing a bunch of nuance. Thanks.
I guess bats could bite on the head, but what would that do with a hard skull protecting you?
I am no expert on the subject, but I think the kinds of bats that bite humans aren't looking to bite a chunk out of you. From my understanding, they want to make a wound and then consume the blood.
Apparently, the bites are small enough to often not be visible, so sometimes if you find a dead bat in your house you should collect it to be tested for rabies, as you may not be aware of having been bitten.
Again, not an expert. Almost all of the above was learned by reading Reddit posts back when I went there.