CDC reports increase in human rabies cases linked to bats in the U.S.

I've seen people freak out because they've seen a raccoon in the daytime and think (1) raccoons are nocturnal so this one is acting strange, and (2) raccoons are rabies carriers, and so it is probably acting strange because it is rabid.

In fact in this part of the country (western Washington) from 1988-2020 rabies has not been found in any wild terrestrial mammal. The only mammals found to have rabies over that time have been 530 bats, 2 cats, 1 horse, and 1 llama.

There's a nifty map here [1] showing what animal populations have rabies in which states.

So what does it mean when you see a raccoon in the daytime in western Washington? It almost always means they aren't finding enough food at night so have to put in overtime foraging.

This is quite common around breeding time. The pregnant females need more food than normal and often will have to go out during the day to get it.

BTW, I believe it is not known why rabies is not found in wild terrestrial mammals here.

For squirrels there are at least three theories. (1) Squirrels are safely asleep in their nests when bats are out, so don't get bitten by bats and if they get bitten by something else that something else is probably big enough that the encounter is fatal for the squirrel, (2) maybe squirrels have strong natural immunity so don't get it even if they do get bitten, or (3) maybe squirrels are particularly vulnerable to it so if they get bitten by a bat they quickly die before they can spread it and since we don't do autopsies on random dead squirrels we come across we never find out about the briefly rabid squirrels.

For raccoons, I don't think it is clear why they aren't picking it up from bats here.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/wild_an...

> The period between infection and the first symptoms (incubation period) is typically 1–3 months in humans. This period may be as short as four days or longer than six years, depending on the location and severity of the wound and the amount of virus introduced. Initial symptoms of rabies are often nonspecific such as fever and headache. Death usually occurs 2 to 10 days after first symptoms. Survival is almost unknown once symptoms have presented, even with intensive care.

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

Look up YouTube videos of patients if you want to be sad.

I had post-exposure prophylaxis for rabies. Five sets of shots into my torso.

This was less than pleasant.

When he was bitten he was inebriated (picked up a wiggling bag and the bat inside bit him), and the next morning he never saw any bite wound (because their teeth are so slender they don't necessarily leave a mark) -- so he wrote the whole thing off.

I'm haunted by his death. The painful lesson is that if one even thinks there was a possibility of a bat bite then one should seek treatment.

Even the pre-exposure rabies shots are only good for a year or two, at least when I got them. If I'd continued working with bats I would have needed yearly titer shots just to keep my immunity up enough to be safe around bats.

The problem with bats and rabies is, bats can be carriers without showing any symptoms until they're near death. The only way to know for sure if a bat that bites you has rabies or not is to take it in to be tested.

And she wasnt doing something stupid either. If I recall correctly she grabbed a rafter in her Attic and bam

I was given a booster shot of anti-tetanus. I was given a Human Rabies Immune Globulin injection straight into the wound on my hand between my finger joints (this was extremely painful). Then I received my first dose of Rabies post-exposure vaccinations (Day 0, Day 3, Day 7, Day 14, and Day 28). The following injections were in my arm. All of the costs were covered by my travel insurance and my home healthcare system.

The entire experience was traumatic. Even though I knew the circumstances were definitely in my favor (I knew the chance of the dog actually being rabid was probably quite low and I had received treatment within a couple of hours) I was still really freaked out for a couple of months.

To make matters worse, just a few days after my incident, there was a Norwegian girl that died from rabies after getting bit by a dog. That definitely didn't help calm my nerves.

Ever since then I am extremely cautious of any animals around me.

> Embargoed Until: Thursday, January 6, 2022, 1:00 p.m. ET

means? And why? This is months old by now and would have been nice to know.

This is why the CDC started blocking pet travel from most international locations starting on 7/15/21.

In case you are wondering, the affected also include pets that initally departed from the US, regardless of rabies vaccination status.

How the CDC finds time to worry about this in the middle of an ongoing pandemic, not sure.

A few days later my wife was talking to friend and she mentioned that we had a possible rabies encounter — bat bites are incredibly small and if you are sleeping its very possible you wouldn't have even felt the bite. Naturally we were shocked and searched our bodies and found nothing, but just to be certain we called our local department of health and found that, yes, this is a valid rabies exposure event and we were eligible for rabies care. (For future reference, you're supposed to basically catch and kill/freeze the animal and send it to animal control for rabies testing to see if you actually had an exposure. We were woken up at 4am so didn't really think to look up rabies protocol at the time)

Cue USA Healthcare insanity. So we first find out after calling the hospital that rabies vaccines are only administered in the ER, meaning we can't just go to any urgent care center and get a shot. Not only this, but the rabies vaccine is a series of 4 shots, each about a week apart. And "because USA", the system has no way of remembering that we're in for a planned series of shots, meaning we have to be re-ingested into the ER every time we enter (keeping in mind that a global pandemic is still going on). So now we're going to the ER for about ~3 hours every few weeks, of which on _literally every visit_ they ask us the exact same series of boilerplate questions about basic health info. 99% of our time is filling out paperwork, the shot itself takes seconds.

We started to wonder if it was really worth it, but its worth remembering rabies is basically 100% fatal. So it was basically risking sure death via rabies or being subjected to an ER wing during a global pandemic multiple times a month. We went with "get the shots".

But it gets worse. So after everything is done, we get a hospital bill. As it turns out, EACH RABIES SHOT IS $4,000! EACH SHOT! This means that between my wife and I, we accrued $32,000 in medical bills for simply trying to not subject ourselves to absolute death. I find this totally insane. On top of the rabies bills we were also charged for ER charges, which apparently are weird because the ER doctors bill separately from the ER itself, and those costs also ran into the thousands. Luckily we had health insurance, and our county covered some of the costs as well.

The whole structure of this is outrageous. Yes, for profit healthcare is bad, but this is on another level. Just imagining someone less fortunate than us that gets into this situation. You're staring down $32,000+ in medical bills, or death. Which do you choose? The whole experience left such a terrible taste in my mouth that I hate the USA even more for even requiring this calculus in the first place.