What Is Rabies?
What is rabies? This disease is something most people have the wrong idea about.
The Disease Everyone Knows Nothing About
Rabies – it’s not just about bats and foaming at the mouth. Sorry to disappoint you. While it might seem like a very exciting disease (if you’re the one who doesn’t have it), rabies is actually pretty serious in the way it can hurt you if you are infected. Since it is a virus, it is tricky to control. Viruses are hard to cure, and there are few anti-viral medications which work with any sort of consistency. Think about the flu – it’s also a virus, and it’s not being cured any time soon, unfortunately.
Rabies will cause the brain to swell in patients who are infected by a bite from an animal. More than 97% of all rabies cases in the United States are caused by dogs, but bats are another possibility if you’re living in close quarters. Now, the good news is that the actual incidence of rabies is quite low since domestic dogs are routinely tested and those who are infected are euthanized to prevent the spread of the disease.
Rabies – It’s Not What You Think
What’s confusing about rabies is that the rabies symptoms don’t get really bad in the patient until it’s often too late to do anything about them. This isn’t a very fair disease, now is it? Sometimes the rabies symptoms won’t show up until a few months after you’ve been bitten, so you may have even forgotten about being bitten at that point. You and your doctor will have to wrack your brains to come up with reasons for why a rabies vaccine might be a good idea.
But enough about you. Rabies is more likely to be spread through animals and that can lead to the death of livestock, which can impact those who are trying to sell their animals to others. However, with screening and containment of outbreaks, rabies can be managed. Truly.
While there may only be a few human cases of rabies in the United States each year, that’s no excuse for you to be ignorant about the disease. Well, not anymore, anyway.