I've now seen people downplaying the risk of rabies today.
So that's a thing
Rabies in domestic animals not super common in the US (60 dogs or so, 250 cats, 60 cows, 20 horses, all approximate and variable by year), but happens all around you, even if you don't know about it. Usually in bats and skunks
It is true that we don't have the reservoir of it in canines that we used to have, but it's such a serious disease that it pays to take significant precautions and to take it very seriously
Our cultural understanding of it hasn't been updated from when there was a more significant reservoir in dogs and coyotes. As a result, people seem to start to think it isn't as big of a deal as they had been "lead to believe."
But it is a truly terrifying disease and part of the reason it isn't more common is because of how seriously people take it and because we do have a cultural and medical understanding around getting vaccinated out of an abundance of caution.
It's especially a problem when you encounter an animal that is behaving oddly.
In Colorado we have no bats around people that spend a significant portion of time on the ground. So if you have a bunch of bats flying around in the sky? Probably not a lot of rabies up there.
But if a bat is on the ground? Especially if it lets you close? That is a sick bat, and it isn't uncommon for that sickness to be rabies (something like 50% of the time if I remember what my friend in Animal Control said?)
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