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.
(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done).
There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate..
TL;DR
This is an unironic reddit copypasta btw
Thanks for the bump!
In a way that's kinda like an upvote. 😀
So, what's the point of a rabies vaccine if it doesnt do anything
I'm guessing it slows down the virus' effectiveness before it starts showing symptoms, since once that happens you're already dead
Can make the difference if you're in the middle of the jungle and the closest hospital is days away
I'm not an expert but I think the vaccine gets rid of rabies as long as it hasn't hit your brain yet. If it doesn't... I'm never leaving the UK
The vaccine needs to be boosted every couple of years. If you get bitten / scratched, you should still get post-exposure treatment, i.e. immunoglobulin at the infection site, and a set of post-exposure vaccine shots. The main difference is that you need less post-exposure shots if you've had a vaccine, and having the vaccine gives you a fighting chance if you don't get the post-exposure care.
The point of the vaccine post-exposure is to get the body working on fighting rabies before the real virus has multiplied to the point that it's visible to the immune system (by which point it's too late). The immune system will then clear the real virus before it gets into the brain. Having a vaccine before exposure means that the immune system will be "on the lookout" for rabies, which will trigger a much faster immune response.
If it's causing you mental anguish, just get the vaccine. It's easy (shots in the arm) and not super expensive. If you're in the UK, the NHS currently has a severe shortage of rabies vaccines, so you'll need to go to a private travel clinic.
If you need post-exposure vaccines in the UK, then only the NHS is allowed to give them - your GP must request them immediately from the internal RIgS service at Colindale, who will deliver it overnight. GPs don't know this because they're fricking awful; if they refuse, then you could try getting a private clinic to contact NHS England directly and ask for an exception on your behalf, which would allow the private clinic to give you the post-exposure shots.
inb4 someone mentions the girl that was bitten in a church by a bat and is literally the only known rabies survivor.
74
obsessed
That is right goyim, I mean friend, the outdoors are dangerous!! Do not go outside under any circumstance! Stay inside and watch porn and play video games.
The outdoors are FAR too dangerous, you could get rabies or Lyme's disease or something!! YOU WILL DIE IF YOU GO OUTSIDE!!
Just jerk off and drink soda!
When I was a 11 years old I discovered the concept of Hell and I immediately developed pseudo-OCD
I have since recovered from it but I still have trouble sometimes
The day that I learnt about rabies and bats is the day that my pseudo-OCD symptoms came back and I could not stop thinking about rabies
I am terrified of rabies and I have dreams about bats
I have dreams that there is a gigantic cloud in the sky but I realise that it's a huge swarm of bats flying through the sky, dropping rabies blood and saliva all over me
God is it the most terrifying thing ever
It's like an OCD delusion made real
I get obsessed about rabies and being attacked by bears when I'm very drunk, it seems our fate had been decided for us rabies bro.
Just get vaccinated lmao
Is rabies vaxx permanent? Can you just get one even if you don't think you were bitten and not have to worry about it again?
No
The rabies vaccine is for scenarios where you are unable to immediately get medical care
Well internet says it lasts for 2 years and you can pay to get it whenever you want at least in my country
chuds would rather die the most horrific death to own the libtards than get vaxxed
why did you copypaste a Reddit post and post it as a thread on Wauf?
Redditchads own you.
>05
>reddit spacing
Yeah. I don't want to read your posts in full, but it's scary.
Some hope though. There are organizations out there trying to vaccinate all the dogs in countries with stray dogs. Like you say, that alone's not going to eliminate the disease from the world, but it's taking out the main way humans get it.
I don't know why those charities don't get more attention. As far as animal welfare goes, I'd rather donate to one of those than muh ownerless shelter puppies. It's something that could actually take away a lot of suffering and save humans.
>Cases of human rabies cases in the United States are rare, with only 1 to 3 cases reported annually. Twenty-five cases of human rabies have been reported in the United States in the past decade (2009-2018). Seven of these infections were acquired outside of the U.S. and its territories.
Wow. Terrifying.
the vax exists, chuds
wow
Terrifying
>It's just like that episode of primal.
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... fricking... 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 fricking 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 fricking EVERYWHERE.
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 fricking 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.