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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Assuming you are starting with a wild raccoon, get one from a population that is not in the eastern parts of the US or Canada and rabies is unlikely.

Here in Washington state for example there have been no documented cases of rabies in any wild raccoon in at least 60 years. Same goes for all other wild terrestrial mammals here.

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Rabies isn't the only disease to worry about here.

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

Or, use extreme caution in handling the animal in the first few days.

Rabies is neither subtle, nor slow.

Bats, on the other hand...

Plus, there are vaccines to prevent it.

If you were talking about the rabies vaccine, for humans, that’s not really a normal vaccine for people to get. It’s not like getting the flu vaccine or the chickenpox vaccine or others, and they shouldn’t be lumped into that same category.

How is it not?

I'm currently 1 of 3 injections into getting a rabies vaccine and it's basically like every other vaccine I've had. A simple, painless, injection in the arm.

I got it the same time as my first shot of the Hep B vaccine too.

This style of rabies vaccine is for pre-exposure. Post-exposure vaccination is more involved if you aren’t primed.

In addition, it used to be the case that people received abdominal shots and the course was pretty intense. That has ended, but people remember it.

post exposure vaccination is a thing?? does it work for everything and why is it called vaccination not treatment?

Yes, you can get the vaccine but you only have days/weeks to do it.

> post exposure vaccination is a thing?? does it work for everything

I believe in this discussion the context is specifically rabies.

> and why is it called vaccination not treatment?

It's both, really. You get a shot of rabies immunoglobulin (at the site of potential infection, i.e., bite) _and_ an extended course of vaccine at the same time.

Oh I remember alright! I got bitten by a stray dog when I was 12 years old. I was given abdominal shots of the vaccine for several days. I can't remember if it was for 7 or 14 days, but it was a very painful and traumatic experience. It caused me to have a deep fear of dogs for several decades.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrifyingAsFuck/comments/1kxxx8m/u...

Yes, but the rabies vaccine is not really for "prevention" (with some exceptions, before someone comes "ackschually" here), more like post-exposure

Because it sucks less than dying of Rabies and boy you don't want to know how low the bar is here

Yes, I read an account by a zookeeper who had been potentially exposed to rabies due to the negligence of a vet. He had to get the rabies vaccine to be safe, which would have been painful enough if all had done well; but then he had a bad reaction to it and had to be hospitalized.

It's expensive but it isn't particularly bad to get.

I had a pretty low risk exposure to a bat this summer and decided to get it because it's so hard to be sure they didn't bite you. Wasn't a big deal, and I got quite a lot of the antibody injections in my finger...

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