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Comment by cma | Hacker News Reader

I think there's no way to test the bat for rabies without them breaking open its head. That was why they had to kill that guy's squirrel recently after it bit the person who worked for the government.

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They did not have to kill the squirrel [1]. First, rabies is extremely rare in squirrels and there are no documented cases of squirrel to human rabies transmission in the US ever.

Second, if a squirrel (or raccoon) does have rabies it will show symptoms within 10 days and die not too long after. The guy had the squirrel for seven years and had the raccoon for much longer than 10 days.

[1] https://nypost.com/2024/12/01/us-news/rabies-expert-says-nys...

> if a squirrel (or raccoon) does have rabies it will show symptoms within 10 days and die not too long after.

tThat sounds like a relatively rapid way of testing if someone has rabies to me. have em bite a squirrel and in 7 days, you know if you need the shots!

I know you’re joking but to be clear, if they have symptoms they wouldn’t need a shot, it’s too late.

That squirrels death was just like the death of the gorilla in the Cincinnati zoo or of that lion on that it merged multiple realities together and profoundly changed our history. Harris won the election in the reality where that squirrel is still alive.

I still find it interesting that, at all times, a squirrel ran behind her in her first public appearance after the election, her concession speech.

I (tongue in cheek) unironically believe in real life SCP objects for "reality distortion fields". We have too much bloody evidence of this!

Mandela Effect. NO ONE HAS ANY GOOD EXPLANATION FOR THE CORNUCOPIA NOT BEING ON THE FRUIT OF THE LOOM LOGO! I'm from that reality, but the one where Nelson lived.

Sometimes broad rules like rabies safety protocols around wild animal bites aren't optimal. But you don't want everyone improvising what to do when it could get people killed in other cases. The rule needs to be legible and not need a lawyer to decipher for every case. The kind of bad response wouldn't have happened if the law on keeping wild animals as pets hadn't been broken first setting things off into a rare corner case.

Regardless of what you do after you catch it, this is a wonderful way to catch an animal in your home.

After a potential exposure myself the state’s protocol was to capture and monitor the animal. If it displayed symptoms or died, it was assumed positive for my vaccination purposes and would then be tested to confirm.

If it didn’t display any symptoms or die, immunization would be held off. Apparently this depends on the animal you were exposed to and rabies incidence rates in the vector in the geographic area.

In my case, the animal died 2 days later and caused quite a headache.

They recommend getting immunoglobulin within 24 hours. Waiting 5 days seems to add risk the vaccine won’t be effective?

That was my previous understanding too, but this was the protocol of a large healthcare system.

Their logic was that only symptomatic animals can spread rabies, and once symptomatic they tend to die within a week and display obvious symptoms even earlier.

I guess the risk of delaying 5 days is extremely low, or perhaps nonexistent. At least with immediately recognized contact?

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