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Comment by NikolaeVarius | Hacker News Reader

The patient was in their 80s. I can give a pass for "dont give a fuck" at that point

There are lots of ways to die in your 80s. Pretty sure "rabies" is not high on my list.

Are you 80? Clearly you don't have a very strong "dont give a fuck" sense

My grandfather starved himself to death in his 90s when gangrene started to take his feet. Pretty sure I know what "don't give a fuck" looks like, and rabies is NOT it.

Dying by rabies is very unpleasant.

There’s a couple videos on YouTube detailing the process.

It’s like advanced Alzheimer’s, delirium, and water starvation in one disease, mixed with unbelievable pain.

Here is a video of the US Army Medical Service that shows dying of rabies. https://youtu.be/OOu2JjQmS6Y

Even if you don't give a fuck, you wouldn't choose this way to die.

damn, 138k views with out one comment

Comments can be set to manually approve, then none approved.

An 80 year old male in the US has a life expectancy of 8.4 years[1]. That's a lot of time to bet, especially since "aggressive bat" is almost certainly rabid.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/population/longevity.html

On average, yes. That particular person might be a terminal cancer patient, though.

Rabies has to be one of the absolute worst ways to die.

Nowadays, they will put you into artificial coma and then you die.

Not nice, but not really worse than many other modes of death - at least superficially. We do not know what happens in the sedated brains of the patients in their last days.

I thought bats are just rabies carriers and don’t exhibit any symptoms of the disease?

A rabid bat might not be showing any symptoms, so you have to assume all bats might have rabies. That's why health authorities tend to say "just looking at a bat, you can't tell if it has rabies."

That said, daytime flying, obvious sickness, and aggression/biting are all symptoms of likely rabies in bats.

No, it is irresponsible and selfish. An infected person can also give rabies to other people -- no doubt his caregivers are getting preventative shots.

There are no confirmed cases of human to human transmission…

Sure, but dying from rabies is not fun.

Presumably you won’t be aware of any of it. Any decent hospital will sedate a rabies patient with enough drugs won’t even know where you are.

See Milwaukee protocol. It did failed to improve outcomes after subsequent testing but they basically put you in a coma which I assume they still do out of compassionate reasons.

Afaik it only worked once by pure luck.

Additionally:

Rabies treatment doesn't guarantee survival, it's really a crap shoot

Rabies treatment can cost $22k out-of-pocket [1]

[1] https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20180220/the-high-c...

In a very USA way, this guy might have been forced to choose between death-by-rabies and leaving something for his descendants.

If you're 80 in the USA, you're on Medicare. In the article you link, a Medicare patient paid $186 for treatment.

I understand that rabies treatment promptly after the bite ( "post-exposure prophylaxis" ) has a very good track record. (1)

But if you leave it until symptoms start, it's pretty much a death sentence. A terrible, agonising death, too. (2)

There are also vaccines, that can be taken pre-exposure. What I did not know is that they date back to 1885 (3)

> Existing vaccine regimens for rabies PEP are close to 100% effective and WHO-prequalified vaccines are highly effective. The expected number of rabies deaths in patients receiving PEP after a confirmed rabies exposure is fortunately extremely low.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X1...

> As of 2016, only fourteen people had survived a rabies infection after showing symptoms. Rabies causes about 56,000 deaths worldwide per year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_vaccine

That's why capturing the animal and prompt testing is important. If you get treated/shots right away, your prognosis is good. If you wait until the disease starts to affect you, your chances go way down.

> If you wait until the disease starts to affect you, your chances go way down.

This is an understatement: "Rabies causes about 56,000 deaths worldwide per year. As of 2016, only fourteen people had survived a rabies infection after showing symptoms."

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