Why don't rabies infected humans act like rabies infected animals
This always puzzled me. Why don’t humans act much more aggressive or crazed like its often depicted with animals. Afaik there’s 2 types of rabies, “dumb” and “furious” so my question is more towards the 2nd type. For example, we never hear of rabies causing a human to accidentally bite another human so why is that?
If we’re blaming people for what their ancestors did hundreds of years ago then Imma need to see everyone your great great great great grandparents all ever did
I’m not blaming the current Dutch government, I’m blaming the old privateering regime. Same way that I can say that the British have blood on their hands for every escalated conflict in the middle-east, that does not mean that I blame the current British administration for it.
From what I’ve heard, humans just aren’t terribly bitey. Seeing videos of kids with rabies is terribly sad, but does give some insight into it. More fear than anything else.
It’s a terrible disease and a terrible way to die. If you get bitten or scratched by an animal, or even if you wake up to a bat in your house, you should immediately get the rabies vaccine, as even a microscratch from a bat can give you rabies. As far as diseases go, I’d say it’s probably up there with ebola in terms of suffering. At least ebola kills you quickly even as your insides melt.
Their bodies and immune systems are really strange. They can get loaded up with tons of diseases but can still manage to outstrip the disease due to their metabolism and immune system. They act as pools of disease. But also are excellent pollinators and eat mosquitoes and other bugs that must be kept in check.
The worst things we can do are build new housing developments in freshly clear cut forests. Diseases that have always been in the bat population suddenly go from 50 miles in the remote woods to someone’s backyard table. A bat has taken a fruit-laced dump on it. Your big dog eats it, and then licks your SO’s hands 20 minutes later. She rubs her eye with the feces-laden saliva, and suddenly, a novel pathogen erupts.
I remember being in college (pre-covid) a biotechnology professor telling us about how zoonotic spillover events happen. He was studying ebola and how it would occasionally kill everyone (or many) in a remote village who came into contact with bats or other creatures often. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, as he basically said it was a matter of time till something like it happened again, but way, way worse. Fast forward a number of years and 1,000,000+ dead Americans later, and we now know that we got off extremely easy.
Bats actually. They seem to be carriers of the disease but don’t seem to be affected by it themselves, but they might still scratch you or bite you through normal behavior.
Although fortunately not a lot because they’re not particularly aggressive. Mostly they just ignore humans as they tend to be out of reach and we’re far too slow to be able to really do anything to them.
... the generation of a “Zombie virus” cannot be firmly excluded according to the currently available biological evidence ... In keeping with this conjecture, an interesting simulation of an imaginary Zombie outbreak reveals that most of the US population would turn into Zombies within one week from appearance of the first case ... the transformation of Rabies virus into a “Zombie virus” will always remain a tangible threat surrounding human future
Uneducated Opinion: Because our higher brain functions can surpress fight/flight better than most animals. It’s the same reason jumpscare movies generally don’t turn theaters into a real-life bloodbath.
By the time rabies has gotten far enough to override that, the nervous system is basically gone and we’re dead.
I think this explains it right here. As another commenter said “more fear than anything else”. Animals act very differently than humans when they are scared, they often get very aggressive. Anecdotally, when I was younger my loving smush of a dog got hit by a car and I ran over to her and she bit the shit out of me. She was scared for her life, and that’s just how her brain was wired to react.
And just so I don’t leave anybody feeling awful, she made it to the vet, needed a pin in her hip, and her tail was amputated, but she went on to live to the ripe old age of 15. My bites weren’t too bad because she was a small dog. No stitches needed, but I have some tiny scars left if you look really close
But if you want to feel angry about the situation, it was a cop car that she was hit by which was flying down a residential street, and the cop yelled at me and my mother and threatened to give us a ticket for having a dog off the leash. And thus my hatred for police began at the age of 10.
It seems like a simple explanation, but the history of biology is pretty much the history of thinking we we’re special and then finding out we were wrong, over and over again.
Humans don’t rely on instincts nearly as much as the typical animals you’d see infected with rabies. It’s pretty rare to hear of someone being injured by a human bite because we’re not made for that, other animals use teeth as a primary weapon.
The rabies virus wasn’t meant to transfer via humans, are just unfortunately affected by it because of similarities in biology
I think it’s because humans don’t fight much with their mouths. We mostly fight with our arms and more rarely bite and rabies just promotes hyper aggressiveness, of which, these symptoms are exhibited in infected humans.
If restrained instead of sedated a human does get very aggressive, flailing their arms, screaming and hurling insults, even at loved ones and family members. I think given the opportunity there would be some biting, but less often than animals, because again, humans primarily use their arms for violence.
Oh hey you also got bit by a kid in 2nd grade? I punched the kid that did it to me. Walk in the next day and get sent to the principals office. When I told them why I did it they tried looking for teeth marks to prove it. A solid 16 hours later.
For one rabies is super rare in humans. When symptoms begin to show in humans they either die soon after or are sedated until they die. Some do rage, but again rare disease and quick death means you don’t really get to see rage happening.
If you ever get a bite from a animal please get a rabies jab. Stray dog get a jab, bat hell yeah get a shot, dog tied done at the grocery store get a shot.
It’s unfortunate that the shot series can run you $50k in the US if you don’t have insurance or your insurance is run by assholes.
One person needed the shot and was told they had 10 days initially so were not super worried. They were then told by the heath department they actually only had three days to do it. The health department referred them to a hospital. The hospital said since it happened where it did, they would need to go to a different hospital. That hospital did not have the shot. The initial hospital was reluctant to provide it because it was expensive but eventually caved and gave it to them.
I agree: get the shot. But don’t expect it to necessarily be easy.
Mouse bit me on my wedding night last month. My dumbass snatched him out of a trash can instead of just dumping. I may have had a few drinks. Didn’t get a whole drop of blood out of me, but he got under the skin.
Next day, I’m seriously sweating it. OK, time to do a little research. Rabies reports around here are astonishingly rare, especially given the nature of the area. 1 in my county for all of 2023 so far. Still…
Found out that not only is rabies crazy rare in rats, mice and lagomorphs, there are no known instances of transmission to a human. I had no idea!
Ditto for all animals. A guy from out of town was here for work one time and he tried to pet a cute stray cat he saw hanging out next door. I ended up being the designated local chaperone to take him and his dumb purple sausage finger to the hospital at 2 AM that night.
Oh no, we’re all just more concerned about affording to survive, and can’t be bothered to remember a detail about a disease from hundreds of years ago that is no longer a threat whatsoever.
For American’s, isn’t it more of a SW desert thing? Hantavirus and such?
LOL, and a post below here is acting like, “Sorry, can’t be bothered to remember.” The various plagues were kinda important in history, don’t think many teachers are skipping over that bit.
I was actually thinking of Oregon. When I lived there a few years back, there were a couple of cases of people who came down with plague after handling wild mice (because of the fleas, obviously, but that should be able to go without saying).
Hantivirus, to my knowledge, can happen anywhere but is more prevalent in the American west, including southwest.
What do you mean checked out? The only checking out you can get for a rat bite is wound care and a rabies shot. Sometimes antibiotics depending on the wound (not because rat, but because bite).
I mean that's the thing though, that rabies shot and antibiotics is a hell of a lot better than doing nothing, and if you do end up infected, improve your outlook a shit ton.
My neighbor was a maintenance man at an apartment complex and was bitten while emptying mouse traps. He was infected with a virus that caused some kind of lymphatic disease that developed into viral meningitis. He wound up spending months in hospitals and rehab and has permanent brain damage and disability. It was treatable if he had gone to the Dr earlier but healthcare is expensive and hard to access so he decided to wait and see if it'd pass.
The UK is officially free from terrestrial rabies.
Which when you look into it more, means “The UK has rabid bats”. Hopefully not Seagulls or Pigeons, or we’re all screwed.
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