September 26, 2020 • 41 mins
Rabies may have gotten a lot of attention in the U.S. in the 70s and 80s, but it's still an issue in developing countries. Learn all about this nasty virus in this classic episode. And stay away from raccoons and bats.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Chuck here for your Saturday select. If you
ever wanted to know how Rabies works, we talked about
it in great detail from February nine, two thousand sixteen.
Give it a tryway, don't you not Rabies? That is?
But this podcast episode How Rabies Works. Welcome to Stuff
You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How
(00:21):
Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck, Bryant, Jerry and stuff you should know.
You're bombing at the mouth, Jerry, don't let him bite you,
(00:41):
all right, you bet, Jerry. I'm gonna have to put
both of you down like Old Yeller. Let's do. It's
about time. I knew from day one when we started
working together that this is how it would conclude. Yeah,
me shooting both of you because of brabies wittness down
old Yellow Wait wait, speaking of Old Yeller, I'm sorry.
Have you seen the kids in the hall take on
(01:02):
Old Yeller? I don't think so. Yeah, Paul makes the
kid shoot the dog and he's his face is sprayed
with blood from the gunshot wound. So wonderful. Yeah, worst
children's book ever. Oh, I guess we just spoiled it. Huh.
Everyone knows Old Yeller gets rabies and is shot. Yeah,
(01:25):
I don't even bother emailing him. But there is a
happy ending. Uh. You know, Old Yeller has pups and
they get a pup, so instead of like coming back
as a ghost dog, that like helps things turn out
well for the family. It left a legacy in the
Dawkinsian view right, still the worst children's book ever, although
(01:47):
it teaches valuable life lessons about death. Why you gotta
do that by killing Old Yeller? I don't know, but
I mean it works all right. Rabies, I don't know.
I thought we'd done this one. It seems like an
obvious one for us. Uh. Yeah, it's definitely in our
wheelhouse for sure. Um. I did not know this either.
(02:08):
It is a virus on every continent in the world
except Antarctica, which a lot of viruses that hold that
that title that aren't on Antarctica inhospitable place. And if
a virus is on every continent, chances are it's a
very old one too, and rabies definitely is extremely old. Um.
(02:29):
People have been writing about rabies for a very long time.
The Mesopotamians who know it's old if you say that word. Sure. Um.
They used to have a law where if your dog
was rabid, you faced the stiff penalty, a fine of sorts.
We have those laws today in the United States. I
mean a lot of our laws stem from Mesopotamian, the
code of Hammurabi. You know, like if you watch somebody's
(02:52):
house burned down and don't do anything, that person can
kill you. Still today, just like from the Code of Hammurabi.
So if you're neighbor's house on fire, you have to
put it out. You have to help put it out.
In Mesopotamia. Uh So, the word rabies um in many
languages means um a rage or go crazy. Um. In
(03:14):
Latin it is from a Sanskrit term robajas to do violence.
And then French uh laaragee it's the sexiest form of
rabies comes from the French now and robert, meaning to
go mad. So if you're not picking up on it. Um,
(03:34):
it's not a friendly virus. No, it's not the one
that you get a dog. Well, actually we'll talk about that.
I'm gonna save it. And for a long time, I mean,
there was nothing we could do about rabies. Yeah, Um,
people went to Liege Belgium to pray to um sat Hubert. Yeah,
it's a round name, isn't it not. Yeah. St. Hubert
(03:58):
was the patron saint of Huntsman. Okay, and uh not
quality footwear. No, and apparently apparently no, that was St.
Clark apparently um St Hubbands. Actually I've not heard of that.
It's a spinal tap joke. You never get my spinal
tap jokes. No, I need to see it more than once.
Apparently there for the people out there, that's fine. There's
like a hundred dudes. We'll just I'll sit here and
(04:20):
be the straight man. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah,
Derek St. Hubbands was the patron state of his ancestors.
Patron stated of quality footwear. Great joke. That is a
good joke, man, I'm sorry stepped all over it. Um
so in leaves you would go and pray to St.
Hubert for protection. Probably not the most effective way to
(04:40):
treat rabies. No, I don't blame people for making a
pilgrimage to lead. From what I understand about rabies based
on researching this, it's terrible. Yeah, it's horrific and fatal.
And it wasn't until the late nineteenth century eighteen eighty
five when the late great Louis Pasteur man, this dude,
he would, didn't that guy do to save the world? Yeah,
(05:01):
we should. He's up in our line. And now we
have a kind of ongoing line of like great scientists. Uh,
so we will include him on the list. And we
need to start acknowledging the ladies too, So Madam Curie,
sure we've got our eye on you. That's right, that's right.
Uh and um. Anyway, so Louis Pasture came up with
a vaccine for rabies, and he was he was one
(05:24):
of the early germ theory guys. He was very president person.
His his inoculation trials were based on the idea that
if you introduced some like a low level of rabies
to a living being, that living being would produce anybody's
(05:45):
and you could introduce increasingly larger amounts over time, and
eventually the person's antibodies would be robust enough so that
if they ever faced rabies in the wild, they would
be able to fight it off. And he was absolutely
and what a crazy thing to think, though, you know,
it is when no one knows anything about germ theory
to think like, why don't we put the disease in
(06:07):
the person, Maybe that'll help cure it. And I think
I think that was around for a while, but I
think it was like some arcane knowledge that not everyone
knew about, and past Year really capitalized that amazing. Um.
But he actually had been working on something using rabbits
as test cases and was basically he proved it can
(06:27):
work in humans by by a boy who had been
attacked by a dog, I think, and contracted rabies. Um,
and uh, Louis past your said, here goes nothing, and
he's stuck in with the shot. And the parents went
and here goes nothing. Right, he goes no nothing, And
they said, well, you said this was gonna work. I said,
no such thing. It's good, Louis, thank you. It's technically
(06:52):
that Um the text, you know, the U Chuck Jones
version of Napoleon when bugs bunnies hang out with him.
Oh yeah, that's how I learned to do a French
accent Chuck, the Great Chuck Jones. Uh so, rabies. Let's
talk a little bit about what it does in your body. Um,
it's really pretty vicious. It It is a viral disease.
(07:14):
Like we said, at the top and it attacks the
central nervous system, the brain and the central nervous system. Um.
It is part of the rab dough vera day yeah family.
Under the genus you take the genus the lie of
virus that was too easy. It was easy, um and
its shaped like a bullet and when it comes in
(07:35):
the body, it basically goes as fast as it can
to the spinal cord yeah um through something called afferent nerves.
With an A they carry impulses towards the central nervous system,
as opposed to efferent with an E they carry impulses away,
but it uses both. So this virus travels along um
the neural pathways through the central nervous system, and it
(07:57):
goes immediately to the central nervous to the spinal cord
and then up to the brain yea. And in the
brain that's where it replicates. You remember, like HIV replicates
inside t helper cells. Well, rabies is a virus that
replicates inside your neurons, your brain cells, which is not
a good place for a virus to start doing. It's
(08:20):
replicating right and right after it starts replicating in the brain,
it makes a second stop a very important stop to
your salivary glands. And the reason it does that is
because that is the number one mechanism of transmission for rabies. Yeah,
that's when you see the foaming at the mouth. It's
not just a uh symptom of rabies. But that's the
main way that you're going to get it is by
(08:42):
being bitten by something with all kinds of nasty rabid saliva.
And apparently because this stuff is um wrecking your brain
by hijacking your brain cells and destroying them. There's two
different versions of rabies, right and step latic, which is
also known as the furious form of rabies. That's the
(09:03):
one you think of when you think of a crazy
rabid dog that's hallucinating and running around in circles and
chasing its tail and biting at the air. UM old
yeller basically, although they toned it down a bit, they
did because they didn't want to scare the kids before
they shot. And then there's a paralytic or dumb form,
(09:26):
and that one is more like lapsing into coma basically, UM,
and I don't know. Surely there's no way to predict
which way that the things the virus is going to
go in a human right, because it's destroying brain cells.
I would think it would just be totally accidental whether
it went towards the enciphalatic or the the um paralytic form.
(09:49):
That's a good question, you know, it would just depend
on where it lodges first. Right, Yeah, but both of
the forms are in the acute stage. UM. And here's
what's so scary. Once it's in the acute stage, once
let's hit your central nervous system, you're done. It's almost
exclusively done. And we'll talk about that. That's that is
the for a very for millennia. The UM this the
(10:13):
idea behind rabies is like it was, it's a fatal disease, fatal,
except now they've started to find a few cases here
there that's not the case. And that's they're starting to wonder, Okay,
is this something we could treat after people are traditionally goners.
Well that's a great tease. So let's uh take a
break and we'll come back right after this with moron rabies. Okay,
(10:57):
So we mentioned the two forms. They're both in the
acute state age and apparently both stages can happen uh
in a single case. It's not necessarily one of the other. Right,
it makes sense, like if this region of your brain
is wrecked and you're furious and raging, well eventually it's
going to get to the part of your brain where
you're like you can't move or breathe and you slip
into a coma and die of respiratory distress, you know.
(11:20):
But also got the impression that wasn't necessarily like that's
the path, Like it can start in the dumb stage
as well. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like it would
just depend on where the virus, what part of your
brain the virus coast to it's got to you know. Yeah.
Um was something I didn't realize about Raby's chuck was
that it's exclusive to mammals. I knew that I didn't um,
but I also have wondered over the years, LIKEWI, isn't
(11:42):
like a rabid squirrel would be your worst nightmare, I imagine,
you know, because they'll already come at you. Yeah, you know,
and a rabid one would definitely come out You're one
of the One of the um traits of or symptoms
of rabid mammal is that a wild one has no
fear of humans. Yeah, they're aggressive. Um. In fact, there's
(12:03):
a case I looked up, as I often do, just
in the news, and little boy in New Jersey just
this week was attacked by raccoon. This raccoon leapt onto
his back while he was walking down the street during
the day. And we will get to the hallmarks. But
that's very important. If you see a nocturnal animal cruising
around during the day at great speeds, stay away. Oh
(12:26):
you're not supposed see raccoons in the neighborhood during the day. Yeah,
just go get your pause. Bb gun. Well I don't
know about that, but call animal control and they'll get there.
Be begun. Um. But yeah, this little boy was was
this raccoon jumped on his back and started biting his
face and neck. Where did you learn to pronounced raccoon? Raccoon?
Now I say raccoon. That's just one of my jokes.
(12:50):
People don't know though. When I said Alex Baldwin, I know,
people literally wrote in like like it's Alec, how did
you miss thirty Rock? And Alec Baldwin said, I don't care. Yeah,
I don't know who this chuck is. So anyway, um, yeah,
you're right. Um, the little boy I think is gonna
be okay, which is a good news, but it's uh, well,
(13:12):
we'll get to the rarity of it. Plus he was
attacked in New Jersey, which is in the U s.
Which means he's going to be just fine. Right, But
a long way of saying that UM, squirrels and mice
and and other smaller animals typically don't get it, and
it makes good sense. It's because if they are attacked
by a rabid animal, they're they're small and probably won't survive.
(13:33):
Like they could very well get rabies. Every sign says
they can, but they'll probably pour A little mouse will
probably just die, right, because if a raccoon gets its
hands on a mouse, it's all over and it bites it.
That saliva is gonna be transmitted to the wound. But
you also need the host to be alive for the
virus to replicate in that host. Exactly if their neck
(13:54):
is broken and they're dead, then that it's not gonna work.
But yeah, absolutely, but what you said, yes, you can
get a woodchuck with rabies. Woodchuck's raccoons. Apparently, in the
United States, raccoons are the most common vector for the
disease UM now yes, uh. But for the most part,
it's larger, slight slightly larger small mammals. Does that make sense, woodchucks, raccoons,
(14:19):
medium sized mammals, medium size on the smallest side, small
to medium, a medium sized mammal. The means like, um,
I guess the raccoon, okay uh. And it takes a
few months for the disease or when its course in
an animal. But the scary thing is it can lie
dormant in humans for years, months or years. That's very scary,
(14:42):
super scary. Yeah, because you guys don't realize. It's like
you think it's like frothing at the mouth or something. No,
the rabies virus is one of the scariest viruses on
the planet. It is um so, like I said, saliva
is the mode of transmission for most rabies cases, and
you can catch it very easily. Technically, if you had
(15:02):
like an open wound and you like rubbed your finger
where the open wound was. I guess I should have
specified that earlier. On the saliva of a rabid raccoon
you could easily catch right, But that's an uncommon thing
to do. You could also if you um took the
brain of that raccoon and rubbed it on your open
(15:25):
wound to your finger. You could also catch it. Even
more uncommon. But if you came across a raccoon's poop
that was rabid and you took it and just rubbed
it all over your hands, the camouflage, the scent of
your hand probably the most uncommon, you would not catch rabies.
That's what the good news. Yeah, it doesn't transfer in
the feces or the blood or the p Yeah, the urine,
(15:49):
the pp uh. Oh man, it's been p fest at
my house. You want a little quick side story. I
changed the litter box before I went to Birmingham, and
four days later we realized that I didn't put litter
in the litter box. I emptied it, put the lid
back on, put it back in, rushed out of the
door to drive to Birmingham, and four days later we're like,
(16:12):
our cats are sick because they're peeing on everything in
the house. Emily went over and she went, hey, well,
I won't say what she said. It wasn't hey, honey, Uh,
guess what, there's a lake of urine in the litter
box and it's all your fault. So we had to
throw a lot of things away in our home that
previously we're working just fine. Man. And uh, I got
(16:36):
the Dummy of the Year award in our house. That's cool.
You should instagram that trophy Dummy of the year. Yeah,
I just it's a tattoo now on my on my
lower back of Alfreddy Newman. So anyway, we've been in
urine land. So gross. It is so gross, and cat
pea is not you know, it's it's tough to mask.
So we're really work lakes of it. Man, what a dummy.
(17:02):
So anyway, just the moral of the story is litter
is a very important part of the letter box. So
and luckily if your cats are rabid, you wouldn't have
caught anything from that. No, but I'm sure I have
what's it called, what's the cat disease from changing letter? Oh,
toxic plasmosis. Gone, I'm sure I've had that for years. Um,
(17:24):
that's why you do most of the things you do,
that's right. So uh, it is a very adaptive disease. Um.
And here's another scary thing, although it's it's not that
scary because it's super super rare, but in laboratories it
has been transmitted through the air aerosol transmission, and they
have found one case where it actually happened in the wild,
(17:46):
but it was a cave that had like tens of
millions of infected bats like sneezing and coughing up their
junk everywhere. And in that case, uh, someone got raby
supposedly through through the air. Three people three bucked into
the cave in Texas. But that that's uh again, not
something you need to worry about. Yeah, but humans can
(18:07):
spread it to and remember you can spread it through saliva,
which means that if you are kissing, especially kissing with
tongue French style, a rabid person, and remember it can
take months, if not years for the symptoms to set
on UM, you could conceivably catch rabies from that. You
(18:28):
can also catch it as an STD through sexual contact.
They believe this is the CDC theorizing at this point
there's no documented cases UM. And then you could also
conceivably catch it from like sharing a cigarette with somebody
or drinking after somebody using the same glass. Again in theory,
any transmission of shared saliva. But here's the scariest one
(18:51):
to me. UM, it has happened before where you get
a transplant of an organ, typically a corneal transplant, and
get rabies that way. Yeah, it's like we accidentally gave
you a cornea with rabies. Yeah. Sorry. And one of
the problems do you think, well, how could that possibly happen? Apparently,
(19:13):
rabies is very hard to detect, and the main place
is to detect it. Remember, it doesn't show up in
your blood or anything like that. I know, you're in
your feces, is um, in the saliva and in the
uh um. Well yeah, and the saliva. It's not even
super accurate, and it takes longer. So for the past
(19:33):
forty years in the United States, the way they test
for rabies if an animal has bit your child as
they capture it and they cut its head off and
inspect the brain. Right, that's horrifying, it is. But unfortunately,
like necessary, I guess of a raccoon bite your kid
off with the head. Maybe an animal lover out there
(19:56):
who's developing scientists will come up with a better test,
more accurate rabies tests that will save the lives of
thousands and millions of woodchucks around the world. But I
wonder how many times they've been like, oh, thankfully no rabies. Yeah, no,
I'm sure, but sorry, your head has cut off. Yeah,
Like imagine being the clinician who did that. It's kind
(20:18):
of bumm you out. Yeah, absolutely, because it's like this
thing's head was cut off because somebody thought it had rabies.
Terrible all right, So, um, everybody um knows through popular
culture and things like Old Yellow that the foaming of
the mouth of a crazy looking dog is a pretty
good sign to stay clear. But there are many other ways,
(20:41):
especially if they have the dumb form that you might
not know. Uh. And here are some of those symptoms
partially or fully paralyzed animal loss of appetite, and a
lot of these can be confused for other things. Because
my dearly deceased dog Lucy probably ticked off about these.
She really like pc strange behaviors like snapping at the
(21:02):
air or turning in circles. Lucy did that. Nocturnal animals
who wander during the day. Um, Like I said, if
you see a raccoon walking around during the day, it's
not a good sign. Drool excessively. Lucy drooled. Wild animals
who showed no fear of humans. Uh. Signs of pikea
like eating things that aren't food. Lucy did that all
(21:24):
the time. UM, sporadic changes in mood or behavior Lucy
restless or aggressive, No, obviously disoriented Lucy. And then a
change in voice, which I thought was strange. She was like, uh.
And generally it varies by regions, so like maybe here
(21:48):
in the South, raccoons or maybe in another place that
might be skunks largely right with the animals that have
it the most, um. Yeah, but apparently in the United
States it's raccoons, for sure, they have the most. But
the mode of transmission in the United States UM comes
through bats more frequently. Yeah, that's the big these days.
(22:11):
So if you get like a hundred bats and a
hundred raccoons, more raccoons are going to have rabies. But
you're more likely to catch rabies from a bat than
a raccoon. Yeah. And why is that. Well, there's a
few reasons bats can get into places that raccoons can't.
UM and Uh. Bats also have very tiny teeth. Uh.
And if you're sleeping in a room and you wake
(22:33):
up and there's a bat in it, it's recommended that
you kill that bat and take it in for rabies testing. UM.
So then they can kill it for you. They can
do your dirty work for you. Um. But the reason
why is because a bat's teeth are so fine that
you can have been bitten in the night and it
(22:54):
wouldn't have woken you up. You won't you won't know
that you were bitten, but you may have contracted rabies
in that case. See are excellent episode on bats, yeah,
which which is good because they bats are wonderful. You
remember Louisa's came like bat crazy over that one. Yeah,
very bat friendly podcast. Yeah, so don't kill it beats.
(23:14):
As a matter of fact, just look the other way
if you see a bat in your room, because something
bad is going to happen to that bat. If your dog,
we'll take a break after this. But if your dog
is potentially bitten by an animal you think it might
be rabid, they will be isolated for ten days. Um.
And if they make it through that ten days, then
you're home free. If they don't, sadly, that means you
(23:37):
have to go the old yellow route, except these days
it's much more humane. Well I don't know about more humane,
but they don't take it behind the bart and shoot it. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I would call that more humane. But in
you know, rural Texas, they might be like, no, that's
quick and easy and painless, just like the shot. What
(23:58):
the lethal injection? Yeah, I'm sure that's what they call
it in Texas. All right, let's take a break. Then,
I'm gonna get your stuff together, get my stuff together,
and we'll come back with more rabies. Chuck. You ever
(24:30):
been to Bali? Nope, you haven't neither. By well, Bali, um,
like Hawaii and some other places around the world, is
actually a um. It was a rabies free zone, a
place where like no cases of rabies have been reported.
They're usually isolated, which makes it hard to get rabies
(24:51):
into and they usually also have some um really top
Nutch governmental restrictions, like if you try to take a
dog in or out of Hawaii, it takes a very
long time and a lot of paperwork. And one of
the reasons why it's because they don't want rabies coming
into their to their state. You're taking momoe Hawaii. No,
that's why she would be but no, we basically she
(25:12):
would get out of quarantine about the time we were leaving. Gotcha,
so um, But my in laws moved and they took
their dogs with them and yeah it was a big deal. Yeah,
I'm sure. But in Bali specifically, they were rabies free
until two thousand and eight, and um, some dogs contracted
raybies somehow and bit some people and some people died
and it was a big deal. They were great, there
(25:35):
goes our rabies free designation. Yeah, so they can get
it back though, right, Well yeah, um, the government has
been eradicating aggressively the rabies that was found on the island.
And I'm not sure if they're doing this. I know
they're doing a lot of euthanizing, or they did in
the affected areas, But in the United States, um, some
(25:56):
wildlife services they're leaving basically what amounts to like a
high a dose of um oral rabies vaccine as tasty
bait out just out in the woods to try to
like control rabies in the raccoon population. Apparently doesn't harm
humans or dogs too. And the reason that they're doing
this is because they saw what a great work, what
(26:19):
a great job at eradicating rabies among dogs in the
United States, because it used to be that rabies in
the US was very frequently transmitted by dogs and in
a lot of the rest of the world, Um, the
dogs are still a major mode of transmission, right, but
in the US of rabies, vaccination push among um pets
(26:43):
has really lowered that that in the in the dog
population especially, and push meaning laws. Um. I don't think
it's in every state now, but I think most states
now required by laws. You're pretty sensible. Yeah, if you
have a pet, you should have a non rabid pet. Yeah,
like he would say, non know, I don't. I don't
want my dog getting that rabies probably. So. Uh, this
(27:07):
is the most recent stat we have. In two thousand six,
um point zero one one of all rabies cases in
the United States were almost said feline were canine eleven
thousands of Yeah, so that's virtually nil and I believe Um.
(27:27):
In two thousand six that same year, not one case
of rabies death came from an American dog, not one
case of human raby's death, right correct. Yeah. And then
of all us wildlife rabies cases are bats. Yeah, which
led to in two thousand six, UM, two of the
(27:49):
three rabies related deaths were from bat transmissions bat bites. Yes,
could actually let me. I spoke wrong that it wasn't
in two thousand six. It was only since n there
has not been one case of death from an American
dog man, So that's great. They really kind of eradicated
that here, that's right. But elsewhere in the world, um, again,
(28:12):
catching rabies from being bitten by a dog is still
a real problem. As a matter of fact, the World
Health Organization called rabies among neglected diseases one of the
most most neglected. One of the most neglected among neglected diseases.
There's still thirty thousand to seventy thousand people who die
(28:33):
every year. It's around one every ten minutes from rabies
in the developing world. Like, think about that in the
United States, three people died in two thousand and six.
That was a bad year. Seventy thousand people as much
as seventy thousand people around the world are dying from rabies.
And these uh, the countries that have these really high
(28:54):
rabies mortality rates and humans are also the ones that
usually have um the least amount of money to pay
for inoculations and also even further have even less money
to inoculate their dogs. So there's a huge push right
now among scientists be like, um, the rest of the world,
you guys need to pay to eradicate rabies at least
(29:16):
in the dog population around the world do something uh.
And and also when you have that rural areas, they're
not able to get to the clinics to receive those
regular inoculations. Yeah, because so Pasteur came up with the
rabies vaccine and basically his technique has been only slightly
altered over the years. Um, that's still a series of
(29:39):
shots in the United States or the West. The ones
that we have are five shots over the course of
a period of time. And again it's boosting your immunity slowly.
And it's a very similar thing in the UH in
what did the guy in the in the emails say
for the last the last listener mail instead of develo
(30:00):
lower income countries, in lower income countries, Um, they they
they have a schedule as well. It's not all getting
them at once. They have to boost your immunity, and
it may not be something like driving down the street
to the minute clinic to get this stuff done. You
may have to travel quite a ways and again miss
some work. So it's a big problem. Yeah, you mentioned
(30:21):
pasteurs brilliant idea. He used the it's called an attenuated
UH form of rabies. It's it's weakened but still alive
that he gathered from spinal cords of animals. These days,
they kind of do the same thing, but it is
not a live form of the virus. It is a
dead form of the virus. But like you said, the
same idea is that will give you this slowly and
(30:44):
before it reaches your spinal cord. Ideally, Um, ideally, if
you want to live, then you've built up the immunity. Hooray. Yeah. Uh,
there are some if you have some extra dough in
your pocket and want to help out some groups. There's
a couple of groups that are working to eradicate rabies
in low income countries, like Rita Rabies in the America's
(31:06):
and Raby Free Raby's Free World are both working to
eradicate rabies elsewhere. Yeah, and if you have been bitten
by a animal that you were worried about, um, I
would just immediately, you know, if I got bitten by
a squirrel or something, I would go to the doctor
and just get it checked out, obviously immediately. You don't
walk that one off. But here are some oh this
(31:28):
a little sting. Oh well, let's just see what happens.
Like the man who castrated himself and then sat down
to dinner in the nineteenth century. Remember we talked about him.
He read his Bible and then ate dinner and then
then went to the doctor. Right. Here are some of
the symptoms and humans humans human beings, not human beings.
(31:48):
I bury it you, rabbit, stomach pain, it's a change
in personality. Anxiety, I'm also biting at the air. Uh,
stomach pains, anxiety, restlessness, fever. Do you have any this? Nope,
Increased aggression, sore throat, excessive saliva, hallucinations, delirium. If that's
happening you, you are really like, should go to the doctor. Yeah,
(32:10):
coma sporadic pulse. At that point, you should have someone
take you to the doctor. And then something called hydrophobia,
which we should cover. That used to be a word
for rabies. Like you could say that person has rabies,
or you could say that person has hydrophobia, and it
used to mean the same thing. And what and why,
what's the deal with hydrophobia. It's a it's an intense,
unreasonable fear of water that develops from raby symptoms. Apparently, Yeah,
(32:33):
because I think drinking is uh, you have a very violent,
painful spasms and responses to trying to swallow water, and
so you become fearful of water. That's crazy, which is
really really sad because you're drooling and you're producing tons
of saliva, but you also are just dying of thirst basically.
But if you do drink anything, the pain from your
(32:56):
throat muscles contracting is so bad that you will just
not drink. You would just rather not drink anything. And
apparently you become fearful of even the concept of drinking,
so you get scared of water. That's also because your
brain is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Man. But yeah,
this is not fun. This is not nice stuff. And
and again. For years and years and years and years
(33:19):
up until like the last few years, I think that
the common conventional wisdom was if you if rabies got
to your central nervous system, bye bye, we might as
well old yellow you because you're not going to survive
and you're going to die one of the worst deaths
we could think of. And it wasn't until two thousand four. Yeah, Gina,
(33:45):
Gina guys, I thought you could say, Gina Gershawn. No,
it's like, oh, that's what happened to her gina. Guys,
she was a girl, a teenager in Wisconsin who was
bitten by a bat, I think, and some doctors said, um,
you're a goner, but I'm not going to give up
on egina, No way, no how. Uh sleep now, baby,
(34:08):
I'm gonna put you in a coma. And he put
her a medically induced coma and it was enough so
that her body was able to fight off the Raby's infection.
So she survived the Raby's infection without being inoculated previously,
and um, apparently without the inoculation being given to her
(34:29):
in a rapid enough time. So she literally survived a
Raby's infection. And now they call that procedure of the
Milwaukee protocol and it's saved five more people's lives. They
call it that. Yeah, And there was a study in
Peru and Uh in the Andies, a lot of Peruvian
groups live near baths, they have to deal with bats.
(34:51):
Apparently some Peruvians have developed immunity to rabies and they
documented I think about a dozen Peruvian who survived rabies
without any inoculation. So they're saying, Okay, this isn't a
fatal disease. We can work with that. But it's like
really big Gangbusters news is it's almost like a natural
(35:11):
inoculation that's happening though the same idea right there, getting
exposed to it gradually. I don't know. I don't know
if that was these people have been been before, or
if some sort of inoculation was passed down to them
through heredity, you know, Like I don't know, I'm not sure.
Like Grand Pappy was strong against the rabies, right, so
I am right, that's how the jeans work, all right.
(35:33):
From nineteen fifties to the roughly mid nineteen eighties. Uh,
the horror stories were true. You did get like upwards
of twenty to twenty three shots in the belly and
the abdomen to treat rabies big needles. Right, Yeah, that
was not an old wives tale. It was a very
painful procedure. Um. I tried to find out why it
(35:55):
was done in the belly, and the only thing I
could find is completely unsubstantiated, but makes sense. Apparently, after
you start having these shots, um, somewhere between ten and twenty,
you start having really bad reactions and inflammation, and but
you need to give them in the same area. So
the belly was the largest part of the body that
(36:17):
you could still find a place to give the injection.
So I don't know if this true or not. That
makes sense. Uh, And we have to mention Ozzy Osborne.
But biting the head off a bat, Yeah, it wasn't
a live bat. You know. Well, there's different stories up
and down. It wasn't allow no, no no, no. He swears
it was alive because he felt the head moving in
(36:38):
his mouth. Oh, other people have said that it wasn't
a lot. The fan that threw the bat on stage
said it was dead. Azzis Ozzie right? He was like,
it was a lot. Uh, thank you, but that is
not an old white. He also bit the head off
the pigeon at a party, but um, he thought the
bat was a toy. Apparently did bite the bat and
(37:00):
did get those injections as a preventative measure, but he
did not ever contract rabies. Smart um. And this you
know who knows. It's also called a legend in some circles.
So but I think it really happened. It's documented. While
I was researching this, I was like, wow, I am
not inoculated against rabies. Maybe I should just go ahead
(37:20):
and do that would be kind of neat to be like,
go ahead and bite me, raccoon. You're crazy, raccoon. I'm fine,
And then you could continue your ongoing battle with your squirrels,
your sports deck squirrels. Now, the squirrels one I had
to take down the bird feeder you just gave up.
Now the kind of complex was like, you're not allowed
to have those. They attract squirrels. I'm like, yeah, no
(37:40):
doubt they squirrels. I know. So I said, it's fine.
Do you got anything else? Nope, rabies. If you want
to know more about it, type that word into the
search bar how stuff works dot com are a B
y s And it will bring up this awesome article.
I know, I know, I'm just teething. It correctly spelled
(38:04):
that way R A B I E S. That's right,
all right? Uh did you say that? Oh? And since
I misspelled something, it's time for a listener mail. I'm
gonna call this um cringe worthy experience. Oh God, why
did we ask him? Hey, guys, have been listening for
a couple of years, writing for the first time to
tell you a compelling story about the time my dad's
(38:27):
eyeball fell out of his head. Perhaps I should say
it was forced out of his head. It takes place
before I was born, but the way he tells it,
it will make you hesitant to go water skiing. See,
my dad was a mob and force serve in Las Vegas.
In particular, you wouldn't want to let your your body
or your face become parallel to the water surface when
(38:47):
you're going around a bend in the river. So when
that happens, you could experience what happened to my dad.
His face skimmed to the water and the force of
that caused his eyeball to pop right out of his head.
It's stuff that and legends are made of. So there
my dad is and can excruciating pain treading water with
his eyeball in the palm of his hand. If you're
ever so lucky as to have your eyeball outside of
(39:09):
your head, hope that it's still attached, like my dad's
eyeball was. Cum as he got river water in his
eye socket. God, he forced it back into his eye
socket and there was nothing else he could do at
that crucial moment. As I understand that he never went
to see a doctor, and as I has been turned
at a fruity five degree angle and his name is
(39:31):
John Rambo is crazy. She said. He was relieved six
months later while the white static he was seeing slowly
started to return and he had normal vision once again.
That's outcome bias. If I've ever seen it, cringe, if
you experienced any squeamish feelings, I consider it his story
well told. Yeah, well well told story that that is
(39:54):
from Lena or Lina in California for California boy, I
don't know. Her dad has made us some tough stuff.
If he did not go to a doctor, he's like hero,
not our simo. Hia. Yeah, it's crazy. So uh did
somebody else wrote in and got me um about having
(40:15):
to get shots like up their nose? That one got
me too, So whoever wrote in with that one hats
off well. At least this guy or got a great
nickname out of old river water socket Jimmy the Mouthful. Uh.
If you have a crunch risy story, keep it to yourself,
send us something else in via tweet to s y
(40:38):
s K podcast, or join us on Facebook dot com
slash stuff you should Know, send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at house to works dot com and has
always joined us at at home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works from More
podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart radio app,
(40:59):
Apple Podcasts, and where ever you listen to your favorite shows.
H m hm
Hey, everybody, Chuck here for your Saturday select. If you
ever wanted to know how Rabies works, we talked about
it in great detail from February nine, two thousand sixteen.
Give it a tryway, don't you not Rabies? That is?
But this podcast episode How Rabies Works. Welcome to Stuff
You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How
(00:21):
Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck, Bryant, Jerry and stuff you should know.
You're bombing at the mouth, Jerry, don't let him bite you,
(00:41):
all right, you bet, Jerry. I'm gonna have to put
both of you down like Old Yeller. Let's do. It's
about time. I knew from day one when we started
working together that this is how it would conclude. Yeah,
me shooting both of you because of brabies wittness down
old Yellow Wait wait, speaking of Old Yeller, I'm sorry.
Have you seen the kids in the hall take on
(01:02):
Old Yeller? I don't think so. Yeah, Paul makes the
kid shoot the dog and he's his face is sprayed
with blood from the gunshot wound. So wonderful. Yeah, worst
children's book ever. Oh, I guess we just spoiled it. Huh.
Everyone knows Old Yeller gets rabies and is shot. Yeah,
(01:25):
I don't even bother emailing him. But there is a
happy ending. Uh. You know, Old Yeller has pups and
they get a pup, so instead of like coming back
as a ghost dog, that like helps things turn out
well for the family. It left a legacy in the
Dawkinsian view right, still the worst children's book ever, although
(01:47):
it teaches valuable life lessons about death. Why you gotta
do that by killing Old Yeller? I don't know, but
I mean it works all right. Rabies, I don't know.
I thought we'd done this one. It seems like an
obvious one for us. Uh. Yeah, it's definitely in our
wheelhouse for sure. Um. I did not know this either.
(02:08):
It is a virus on every continent in the world
except Antarctica, which a lot of viruses that hold that
that title that aren't on Antarctica inhospitable place. And if
a virus is on every continent, chances are it's a
very old one too, and rabies definitely is extremely old. Um.
(02:29):
People have been writing about rabies for a very long time.
The Mesopotamians who know it's old if you say that word. Sure. Um.
They used to have a law where if your dog
was rabid, you faced the stiff penalty, a fine of sorts.
We have those laws today in the United States. I
mean a lot of our laws stem from Mesopotamian, the
code of Hammurabi. You know, like if you watch somebody's
(02:52):
house burned down and don't do anything, that person can
kill you. Still today, just like from the Code of Hammurabi.
So if you're neighbor's house on fire, you have to
put it out. You have to help put it out.
In Mesopotamia. Uh So, the word rabies um in many
languages means um a rage or go crazy. Um. In
(03:14):
Latin it is from a Sanskrit term robajas to do violence.
And then French uh laaragee it's the sexiest form of
rabies comes from the French now and robert, meaning to
go mad. So if you're not picking up on it. Um,
(03:34):
it's not a friendly virus. No, it's not the one
that you get a dog. Well, actually we'll talk about that.
I'm gonna save it. And for a long time, I mean,
there was nothing we could do about rabies. Yeah, Um,
people went to Liege Belgium to pray to um sat Hubert. Yeah,
it's a round name, isn't it not. Yeah. St. Hubert
(03:58):
was the patron saint of Huntsman. Okay, and uh not
quality footwear. No, and apparently apparently no, that was St.
Clark apparently um St Hubbands. Actually I've not heard of that.
It's a spinal tap joke. You never get my spinal
tap jokes. No, I need to see it more than once.
Apparently there for the people out there, that's fine. There's
like a hundred dudes. We'll just I'll sit here and
(04:20):
be the straight man. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah,
Derek St. Hubbands was the patron state of his ancestors.
Patron stated of quality footwear. Great joke. That is a
good joke, man, I'm sorry stepped all over it. Um
so in leaves you would go and pray to St.
Hubert for protection. Probably not the most effective way to
(04:40):
treat rabies. No, I don't blame people for making a
pilgrimage to lead. From what I understand about rabies based
on researching this, it's terrible. Yeah, it's horrific and fatal.
And it wasn't until the late nineteenth century eighteen eighty
five when the late great Louis Pasteur man, this dude,
he would, didn't that guy do to save the world? Yeah,
(05:01):
we should. He's up in our line. And now we
have a kind of ongoing line of like great scientists. Uh,
so we will include him on the list. And we
need to start acknowledging the ladies too, So Madam Curie,
sure we've got our eye on you. That's right, that's right.
Uh and um. Anyway, so Louis Pasture came up with
a vaccine for rabies, and he was he was one
(05:24):
of the early germ theory guys. He was very president person.
His his inoculation trials were based on the idea that
if you introduced some like a low level of rabies
to a living being, that living being would produce anybody's
(05:45):
and you could introduce increasingly larger amounts over time, and
eventually the person's antibodies would be robust enough so that
if they ever faced rabies in the wild, they would
be able to fight it off. And he was absolutely
and what a crazy thing to think, though, you know,
it is when no one knows anything about germ theory
to think like, why don't we put the disease in
(06:07):
the person, Maybe that'll help cure it. And I think
I think that was around for a while, but I
think it was like some arcane knowledge that not everyone
knew about, and past Year really capitalized that amazing. Um.
But he actually had been working on something using rabbits
as test cases and was basically he proved it can
(06:27):
work in humans by by a boy who had been
attacked by a dog, I think, and contracted rabies. Um,
and uh, Louis past your said, here goes nothing, and
he's stuck in with the shot. And the parents went
and here goes nothing. Right, he goes no nothing, And
they said, well, you said this was gonna work. I said,
no such thing. It's good, Louis, thank you. It's technically
(06:52):
that Um the text, you know, the U Chuck Jones
version of Napoleon when bugs bunnies hang out with him.
Oh yeah, that's how I learned to do a French
accent Chuck, the Great Chuck Jones. Uh so, rabies. Let's
talk a little bit about what it does in your body. Um,
it's really pretty vicious. It It is a viral disease.
(07:14):
Like we said, at the top and it attacks the
central nervous system, the brain and the central nervous system. Um.
It is part of the rab dough vera day yeah family.
Under the genus you take the genus the lie of
virus that was too easy. It was easy, um and
its shaped like a bullet and when it comes in
(07:35):
the body, it basically goes as fast as it can
to the spinal cord yeah um through something called afferent nerves.
With an A they carry impulses towards the central nervous system,
as opposed to efferent with an E they carry impulses away,
but it uses both. So this virus travels along um
the neural pathways through the central nervous system, and it
(07:57):
goes immediately to the central nervous to the spinal cord
and then up to the brain yea. And in the
brain that's where it replicates. You remember, like HIV replicates
inside t helper cells. Well, rabies is a virus that
replicates inside your neurons, your brain cells, which is not
a good place for a virus to start doing. It's
(08:20):
replicating right and right after it starts replicating in the brain,
it makes a second stop a very important stop to
your salivary glands. And the reason it does that is
because that is the number one mechanism of transmission for rabies. Yeah,
that's when you see the foaming at the mouth. It's
not just a uh symptom of rabies. But that's the
main way that you're going to get it is by
(08:42):
being bitten by something with all kinds of nasty rabid saliva.
And apparently because this stuff is um wrecking your brain
by hijacking your brain cells and destroying them. There's two
different versions of rabies, right and step latic, which is
also known as the furious form of rabies. That's the
(09:03):
one you think of when you think of a crazy
rabid dog that's hallucinating and running around in circles and
chasing its tail and biting at the air. UM old
yeller basically, although they toned it down a bit, they
did because they didn't want to scare the kids before
they shot. And then there's a paralytic or dumb form,
(09:26):
and that one is more like lapsing into coma basically, UM,
and I don't know. Surely there's no way to predict
which way that the things the virus is going to
go in a human right, because it's destroying brain cells.
I would think it would just be totally accidental whether
it went towards the enciphalatic or the the um paralytic form.
(09:49):
That's a good question, you know, it would just depend
on where it lodges first. Right, Yeah, but both of
the forms are in the acute stage. UM. And here's
what's so scary. Once it's in the acute stage, once
let's hit your central nervous system, you're done. It's almost
exclusively done. And we'll talk about that. That's that is
the for a very for millennia. The UM this the
(10:13):
idea behind rabies is like it was, it's a fatal disease, fatal,
except now they've started to find a few cases here
there that's not the case. And that's they're starting to wonder, Okay,
is this something we could treat after people are traditionally goners.
Well that's a great tease. So let's uh take a
break and we'll come back right after this with moron rabies. Okay,
(10:57):
So we mentioned the two forms. They're both in the
acute state age and apparently both stages can happen uh
in a single case. It's not necessarily one of the other. Right,
it makes sense, like if this region of your brain
is wrecked and you're furious and raging, well eventually it's
going to get to the part of your brain where
you're like you can't move or breathe and you slip
into a coma and die of respiratory distress, you know.
(11:20):
But also got the impression that wasn't necessarily like that's
the path, Like it can start in the dumb stage
as well. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like it would
just depend on where the virus, what part of your
brain the virus coast to it's got to you know. Yeah.
Um was something I didn't realize about Raby's chuck was
that it's exclusive to mammals. I knew that I didn't um,
but I also have wondered over the years, LIKEWI, isn't
(11:42):
like a rabid squirrel would be your worst nightmare, I imagine,
you know, because they'll already come at you. Yeah, you know,
and a rabid one would definitely come out You're one
of the One of the um traits of or symptoms
of rabid mammal is that a wild one has no
fear of humans. Yeah, they're aggressive. Um. In fact, there's
(12:03):
a case I looked up, as I often do, just
in the news, and little boy in New Jersey just
this week was attacked by raccoon. This raccoon leapt onto
his back while he was walking down the street during
the day. And we will get to the hallmarks. But
that's very important. If you see a nocturnal animal cruising
around during the day at great speeds, stay away. Oh
(12:26):
you're not supposed see raccoons in the neighborhood during the day. Yeah,
just go get your pause. Bb gun. Well I don't
know about that, but call animal control and they'll get there.
Be begun. Um. But yeah, this little boy was was
this raccoon jumped on his back and started biting his
face and neck. Where did you learn to pronounced raccoon? Raccoon?
Now I say raccoon. That's just one of my jokes.
(12:50):
People don't know though. When I said Alex Baldwin, I know,
people literally wrote in like like it's Alec, how did
you miss thirty Rock? And Alec Baldwin said, I don't care. Yeah,
I don't know who this chuck is. So anyway, um, yeah,
you're right. Um, the little boy I think is gonna
be okay, which is a good news, but it's uh, well,
(13:12):
we'll get to the rarity of it. Plus he was
attacked in New Jersey, which is in the U s.
Which means he's going to be just fine. Right, But
a long way of saying that UM, squirrels and mice
and and other smaller animals typically don't get it, and
it makes good sense. It's because if they are attacked
by a rabid animal, they're they're small and probably won't survive.
(13:33):
Like they could very well get rabies. Every sign says
they can, but they'll probably pour A little mouse will
probably just die, right, because if a raccoon gets its
hands on a mouse, it's all over and it bites it.
That saliva is gonna be transmitted to the wound. But
you also need the host to be alive for the
virus to replicate in that host. Exactly if their neck
(13:54):
is broken and they're dead, then that it's not gonna work.
But yeah, absolutely, but what you said, yes, you can
get a woodchuck with rabies. Woodchuck's raccoons. Apparently, in the
United States, raccoons are the most common vector for the
disease UM now yes, uh. But for the most part,
it's larger, slight slightly larger small mammals. Does that make sense, woodchucks, raccoons,
(14:19):
medium sized mammals, medium size on the smallest side, small
to medium, a medium sized mammal. The means like, um,
I guess the raccoon, okay uh. And it takes a
few months for the disease or when its course in
an animal. But the scary thing is it can lie
dormant in humans for years, months or years. That's very scary,
(14:42):
super scary. Yeah, because you guys don't realize. It's like
you think it's like frothing at the mouth or something. No,
the rabies virus is one of the scariest viruses on
the planet. It is um so, like I said, saliva
is the mode of transmission for most rabies cases, and
you can catch it very easily. Technically, if you had
(15:02):
like an open wound and you like rubbed your finger
where the open wound was. I guess I should have
specified that earlier. On the saliva of a rabid raccoon
you could easily catch right, But that's an uncommon thing
to do. You could also if you um took the
brain of that raccoon and rubbed it on your open
(15:25):
wound to your finger. You could also catch it. Even
more uncommon. But if you came across a raccoon's poop
that was rabid and you took it and just rubbed
it all over your hands, the camouflage, the scent of
your hand probably the most uncommon, you would not catch rabies.
That's what the good news. Yeah, it doesn't transfer in
the feces or the blood or the p Yeah, the urine,
(15:49):
the pp uh. Oh man, it's been p fest at
my house. You want a little quick side story. I
changed the litter box before I went to Birmingham, and
four days later we realized that I didn't put litter
in the litter box. I emptied it, put the lid
back on, put it back in, rushed out of the
door to drive to Birmingham, and four days later we're like,
(16:12):
our cats are sick because they're peeing on everything in
the house. Emily went over and she went, hey, well,
I won't say what she said. It wasn't hey, honey, Uh,
guess what, there's a lake of urine in the litter
box and it's all your fault. So we had to
throw a lot of things away in our home that
previously we're working just fine. Man. And uh, I got
(16:36):
the Dummy of the Year award in our house. That's cool.
You should instagram that trophy Dummy of the year. Yeah,
I just it's a tattoo now on my on my
lower back of Alfreddy Newman. So anyway, we've been in
urine land. So gross. It is so gross, and cat
pea is not you know, it's it's tough to mask.
So we're really work lakes of it. Man, what a dummy.
(17:02):
So anyway, just the moral of the story is litter
is a very important part of the letter box. So
and luckily if your cats are rabid, you wouldn't have
caught anything from that. No, but I'm sure I have
what's it called, what's the cat disease from changing letter? Oh,
toxic plasmosis. Gone, I'm sure I've had that for years. Um,
(17:24):
that's why you do most of the things you do,
that's right. So uh, it is a very adaptive disease. Um.
And here's another scary thing, although it's it's not that
scary because it's super super rare, but in laboratories it
has been transmitted through the air aerosol transmission, and they
have found one case where it actually happened in the wild,
(17:46):
but it was a cave that had like tens of
millions of infected bats like sneezing and coughing up their
junk everywhere. And in that case, uh, someone got raby
supposedly through through the air. Three people three bucked into
the cave in Texas. But that that's uh again, not
something you need to worry about. Yeah, but humans can
(18:07):
spread it to and remember you can spread it through saliva,
which means that if you are kissing, especially kissing with
tongue French style, a rabid person, and remember it can
take months, if not years for the symptoms to set
on UM, you could conceivably catch rabies from that. You
(18:28):
can also catch it as an STD through sexual contact.
They believe this is the CDC theorizing at this point
there's no documented cases UM. And then you could also
conceivably catch it from like sharing a cigarette with somebody
or drinking after somebody using the same glass. Again in theory,
any transmission of shared saliva. But here's the scariest one
(18:51):
to me. UM, it has happened before where you get
a transplant of an organ, typically a corneal transplant, and
get rabies that way. Yeah, it's like we accidentally gave
you a cornea with rabies. Yeah. Sorry. And one of
the problems do you think, well, how could that possibly happen? Apparently,
(19:13):
rabies is very hard to detect, and the main place
is to detect it. Remember, it doesn't show up in
your blood or anything like that. I know, you're in
your feces, is um, in the saliva and in the
uh um. Well yeah, and the saliva. It's not even
super accurate, and it takes longer. So for the past
(19:33):
forty years in the United States, the way they test
for rabies if an animal has bit your child as
they capture it and they cut its head off and
inspect the brain. Right, that's horrifying, it is. But unfortunately,
like necessary, I guess of a raccoon bite your kid
off with the head. Maybe an animal lover out there
(19:56):
who's developing scientists will come up with a better test,
more accurate rabies tests that will save the lives of
thousands and millions of woodchucks around the world. But I
wonder how many times they've been like, oh, thankfully no rabies. Yeah, no,
I'm sure, but sorry, your head has cut off. Yeah,
Like imagine being the clinician who did that. It's kind
(20:18):
of bumm you out. Yeah, absolutely, because it's like this
thing's head was cut off because somebody thought it had rabies.
Terrible all right, So, um, everybody um knows through popular
culture and things like Old Yellow that the foaming of
the mouth of a crazy looking dog is a pretty
good sign to stay clear. But there are many other ways,
(20:41):
especially if they have the dumb form that you might
not know. Uh. And here are some of those symptoms
partially or fully paralyzed animal loss of appetite, and a
lot of these can be confused for other things. Because
my dearly deceased dog Lucy probably ticked off about these.
She really like pc strange behaviors like snapping at the
(21:02):
air or turning in circles. Lucy did that. Nocturnal animals
who wander during the day. Um, Like I said, if
you see a raccoon walking around during the day, it's
not a good sign. Drool excessively. Lucy drooled. Wild animals
who showed no fear of humans. Uh. Signs of pikea
like eating things that aren't food. Lucy did that all
(21:24):
the time. UM, sporadic changes in mood or behavior Lucy
restless or aggressive, No, obviously disoriented Lucy. And then a
change in voice, which I thought was strange. She was like, uh.
And generally it varies by regions, so like maybe here
(21:48):
in the South, raccoons or maybe in another place that
might be skunks largely right with the animals that have
it the most, um. Yeah, but apparently in the United
States it's raccoons, for sure, they have the most. But
the mode of transmission in the United States UM comes
through bats more frequently. Yeah, that's the big these days.
(22:11):
So if you get like a hundred bats and a
hundred raccoons, more raccoons are going to have rabies. But
you're more likely to catch rabies from a bat than
a raccoon. Yeah. And why is that. Well, there's a
few reasons bats can get into places that raccoons can't.
UM and Uh. Bats also have very tiny teeth. Uh.
And if you're sleeping in a room and you wake
(22:33):
up and there's a bat in it, it's recommended that
you kill that bat and take it in for rabies testing. UM.
So then they can kill it for you. They can
do your dirty work for you. Um. But the reason
why is because a bat's teeth are so fine that
you can have been bitten in the night and it
(22:54):
wouldn't have woken you up. You won't you won't know
that you were bitten, but you may have contracted rabies
in that case. See are excellent episode on bats, yeah,
which which is good because they bats are wonderful. You
remember Louisa's came like bat crazy over that one. Yeah,
very bat friendly podcast. Yeah, so don't kill it beats.
(23:14):
As a matter of fact, just look the other way
if you see a bat in your room, because something
bad is going to happen to that bat. If your dog,
we'll take a break after this. But if your dog
is potentially bitten by an animal you think it might
be rabid, they will be isolated for ten days. Um.
And if they make it through that ten days, then
you're home free. If they don't, sadly, that means you
(23:37):
have to go the old yellow route, except these days
it's much more humane. Well I don't know about more humane,
but they don't take it behind the bart and shoot it. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I would call that more humane. But in
you know, rural Texas, they might be like, no, that's
quick and easy and painless, just like the shot. What
(23:58):
the lethal injection? Yeah, I'm sure that's what they call
it in Texas. All right, let's take a break. Then,
I'm gonna get your stuff together, get my stuff together,
and we'll come back with more rabies. Chuck. You ever
(24:30):
been to Bali? Nope, you haven't neither. By well, Bali, um,
like Hawaii and some other places around the world, is
actually a um. It was a rabies free zone, a
place where like no cases of rabies have been reported.
They're usually isolated, which makes it hard to get rabies
(24:51):
into and they usually also have some um really top
Nutch governmental restrictions, like if you try to take a
dog in or out of Hawaii, it takes a very
long time and a lot of paperwork. And one of
the reasons why it's because they don't want rabies coming
into their to their state. You're taking momoe Hawaii. No,
that's why she would be but no, we basically she
(25:12):
would get out of quarantine about the time we were leaving. Gotcha,
so um, But my in laws moved and they took
their dogs with them and yeah it was a big deal. Yeah,
I'm sure. But in Bali specifically, they were rabies free
until two thousand and eight, and um, some dogs contracted
raybies somehow and bit some people and some people died
and it was a big deal. They were great, there
(25:35):
goes our rabies free designation. Yeah, so they can get
it back though, right, Well yeah, um, the government has
been eradicating aggressively the rabies that was found on the island.
And I'm not sure if they're doing this. I know
they're doing a lot of euthanizing, or they did in
the affected areas, But in the United States, um, some
(25:56):
wildlife services they're leaving basically what amounts to like a
high a dose of um oral rabies vaccine as tasty
bait out just out in the woods to try to
like control rabies in the raccoon population. Apparently doesn't harm
humans or dogs too. And the reason that they're doing
this is because they saw what a great work, what
(26:19):
a great job at eradicating rabies among dogs in the
United States, because it used to be that rabies in
the US was very frequently transmitted by dogs and in
a lot of the rest of the world, Um, the
dogs are still a major mode of transmission, right, but
in the US of rabies, vaccination push among um pets
(26:43):
has really lowered that that in the in the dog
population especially, and push meaning laws. Um. I don't think
it's in every state now, but I think most states
now required by laws. You're pretty sensible. Yeah, if you
have a pet, you should have a non rabid pet. Yeah,
like he would say, non know, I don't. I don't
want my dog getting that rabies probably. So. Uh, this
(27:07):
is the most recent stat we have. In two thousand six,
um point zero one one of all rabies cases in
the United States were almost said feline were canine eleven
thousands of Yeah, so that's virtually nil and I believe Um.
(27:27):
In two thousand six that same year, not one case
of rabies death came from an American dog, not one
case of human raby's death, right correct. Yeah. And then
of all us wildlife rabies cases are bats. Yeah, which
led to in two thousand six, UM, two of the
(27:49):
three rabies related deaths were from bat transmissions bat bites. Yes,
could actually let me. I spoke wrong that it wasn't
in two thousand six. It was only since n there
has not been one case of death from an American
dog man, So that's great. They really kind of eradicated
that here, that's right. But elsewhere in the world, um, again,
(28:12):
catching rabies from being bitten by a dog is still
a real problem. As a matter of fact, the World
Health Organization called rabies among neglected diseases one of the
most most neglected. One of the most neglected among neglected diseases.
There's still thirty thousand to seventy thousand people who die
(28:33):
every year. It's around one every ten minutes from rabies
in the developing world. Like, think about that in the
United States, three people died in two thousand and six.
That was a bad year. Seventy thousand people as much
as seventy thousand people around the world are dying from rabies.
And these uh, the countries that have these really high
(28:54):
rabies mortality rates and humans are also the ones that
usually have um the least amount of money to pay
for inoculations and also even further have even less money
to inoculate their dogs. So there's a huge push right
now among scientists be like, um, the rest of the world,
you guys need to pay to eradicate rabies at least
(29:16):
in the dog population around the world do something uh.
And and also when you have that rural areas, they're
not able to get to the clinics to receive those
regular inoculations. Yeah, because so Pasteur came up with the
rabies vaccine and basically his technique has been only slightly
altered over the years. Um, that's still a series of
(29:39):
shots in the United States or the West. The ones
that we have are five shots over the course of
a period of time. And again it's boosting your immunity slowly.
And it's a very similar thing in the UH in
what did the guy in the in the emails say
for the last the last listener mail instead of develo
(30:00):
lower income countries, in lower income countries, Um, they they
they have a schedule as well. It's not all getting
them at once. They have to boost your immunity, and
it may not be something like driving down the street
to the minute clinic to get this stuff done. You
may have to travel quite a ways and again miss
some work. So it's a big problem. Yeah, you mentioned
(30:21):
pasteurs brilliant idea. He used the it's called an attenuated
UH form of rabies. It's it's weakened but still alive
that he gathered from spinal cords of animals. These days,
they kind of do the same thing, but it is
not a live form of the virus. It is a
dead form of the virus. But like you said, the
same idea is that will give you this slowly and
(30:44):
before it reaches your spinal cord. Ideally, Um, ideally, if
you want to live, then you've built up the immunity. Hooray. Yeah. Uh,
there are some if you have some extra dough in
your pocket and want to help out some groups. There's
a couple of groups that are working to eradicate rabies
in low income countries, like Rita Rabies in the America's
(31:06):
and Raby Free Raby's Free World are both working to
eradicate rabies elsewhere. Yeah, and if you have been bitten
by a animal that you were worried about, um, I
would just immediately, you know, if I got bitten by
a squirrel or something, I would go to the doctor
and just get it checked out, obviously immediately. You don't
walk that one off. But here are some oh this
(31:28):
a little sting. Oh well, let's just see what happens.
Like the man who castrated himself and then sat down
to dinner in the nineteenth century. Remember we talked about him.
He read his Bible and then ate dinner and then
then went to the doctor. Right. Here are some of
the symptoms and humans humans human beings, not human beings.
(31:48):
I bury it you, rabbit, stomach pain, it's a change
in personality. Anxiety, I'm also biting at the air. Uh,
stomach pains, anxiety, restlessness, fever. Do you have any this? Nope,
Increased aggression, sore throat, excessive saliva, hallucinations, delirium. If that's
happening you, you are really like, should go to the doctor. Yeah,
(32:10):
coma sporadic pulse. At that point, you should have someone
take you to the doctor. And then something called hydrophobia,
which we should cover. That used to be a word
for rabies. Like you could say that person has rabies,
or you could say that person has hydrophobia, and it
used to mean the same thing. And what and why,
what's the deal with hydrophobia. It's a it's an intense,
unreasonable fear of water that develops from raby symptoms. Apparently, Yeah,
(32:33):
because I think drinking is uh, you have a very violent,
painful spasms and responses to trying to swallow water, and
so you become fearful of water. That's crazy, which is
really really sad because you're drooling and you're producing tons
of saliva, but you also are just dying of thirst basically.
But if you do drink anything, the pain from your
(32:56):
throat muscles contracting is so bad that you will just
not drink. You would just rather not drink anything. And
apparently you become fearful of even the concept of drinking,
so you get scared of water. That's also because your
brain is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Man. But yeah,
this is not fun. This is not nice stuff. And
and again. For years and years and years and years
(33:19):
up until like the last few years, I think that
the common conventional wisdom was if you if rabies got
to your central nervous system, bye bye, we might as
well old yellow you because you're not going to survive
and you're going to die one of the worst deaths
we could think of. And it wasn't until two thousand four. Yeah, Gina,
(33:45):
Gina guys, I thought you could say, Gina Gershawn. No,
it's like, oh, that's what happened to her gina. Guys,
she was a girl, a teenager in Wisconsin who was
bitten by a bat, I think, and some doctors said, um,
you're a goner, but I'm not going to give up
on egina, No way, no how. Uh sleep now, baby,
(34:08):
I'm gonna put you in a coma. And he put
her a medically induced coma and it was enough so
that her body was able to fight off the Raby's infection.
So she survived the Raby's infection without being inoculated previously,
and um, apparently without the inoculation being given to her
(34:29):
in a rapid enough time. So she literally survived a
Raby's infection. And now they call that procedure of the
Milwaukee protocol and it's saved five more people's lives. They
call it that. Yeah, And there was a study in
Peru and Uh in the Andies, a lot of Peruvian
groups live near baths, they have to deal with bats.
(34:51):
Apparently some Peruvians have developed immunity to rabies and they
documented I think about a dozen Peruvian who survived rabies
without any inoculation. So they're saying, Okay, this isn't a
fatal disease. We can work with that. But it's like
really big Gangbusters news is it's almost like a natural
(35:11):
inoculation that's happening though the same idea right there, getting
exposed to it gradually. I don't know. I don't know
if that was these people have been been before, or
if some sort of inoculation was passed down to them
through heredity, you know, Like I don't know, I'm not sure.
Like Grand Pappy was strong against the rabies, right, so
I am right, that's how the jeans work, all right.
(35:33):
From nineteen fifties to the roughly mid nineteen eighties. Uh,
the horror stories were true. You did get like upwards
of twenty to twenty three shots in the belly and
the abdomen to treat rabies big needles. Right, Yeah, that
was not an old wives tale. It was a very
painful procedure. Um. I tried to find out why it
(35:55):
was done in the belly, and the only thing I
could find is completely unsubstantiated, but makes sense. Apparently, after
you start having these shots, um, somewhere between ten and twenty,
you start having really bad reactions and inflammation, and but
you need to give them in the same area. So
the belly was the largest part of the body that
(36:17):
you could still find a place to give the injection.
So I don't know if this true or not. That
makes sense. Uh, And we have to mention Ozzy Osborne.
But biting the head off a bat, Yeah, it wasn't
a live bat. You know. Well, there's different stories up
and down. It wasn't allow no, no no, no. He swears
it was alive because he felt the head moving in
(36:38):
his mouth. Oh, other people have said that it wasn't
a lot. The fan that threw the bat on stage
said it was dead. Azzis Ozzie right? He was like,
it was a lot. Uh, thank you, but that is
not an old white. He also bit the head off
the pigeon at a party, but um, he thought the
bat was a toy. Apparently did bite the bat and
(37:00):
did get those injections as a preventative measure, but he
did not ever contract rabies. Smart um. And this you
know who knows. It's also called a legend in some circles.
So but I think it really happened. It's documented. While
I was researching this, I was like, wow, I am
not inoculated against rabies. Maybe I should just go ahead
(37:20):
and do that would be kind of neat to be like,
go ahead and bite me, raccoon. You're crazy, raccoon. I'm fine,
And then you could continue your ongoing battle with your squirrels,
your sports deck squirrels. Now, the squirrels one I had
to take down the bird feeder you just gave up.
Now the kind of complex was like, you're not allowed
to have those. They attract squirrels. I'm like, yeah, no
(37:40):
doubt they squirrels. I know. So I said, it's fine.
Do you got anything else? Nope, rabies. If you want
to know more about it, type that word into the
search bar how stuff works dot com are a B
y s And it will bring up this awesome article.
I know, I know, I'm just teething. It correctly spelled
(38:04):
that way R A B I E S. That's right,
all right? Uh did you say that? Oh? And since
I misspelled something, it's time for a listener mail. I'm
gonna call this um cringe worthy experience. Oh God, why
did we ask him? Hey, guys, have been listening for
a couple of years, writing for the first time to
tell you a compelling story about the time my dad's
(38:27):
eyeball fell out of his head. Perhaps I should say
it was forced out of his head. It takes place
before I was born, but the way he tells it,
it will make you hesitant to go water skiing. See,
my dad was a mob and force serve in Las Vegas.
In particular, you wouldn't want to let your your body
or your face become parallel to the water surface when
(38:47):
you're going around a bend in the river. So when
that happens, you could experience what happened to my dad.
His face skimmed to the water and the force of
that caused his eyeball to pop right out of his head.
It's stuff that and legends are made of. So there
my dad is and can excruciating pain treading water with
his eyeball in the palm of his hand. If you're
ever so lucky as to have your eyeball outside of
(39:09):
your head, hope that it's still attached, like my dad's
eyeball was. Cum as he got river water in his
eye socket. God, he forced it back into his eye
socket and there was nothing else he could do at
that crucial moment. As I understand that he never went
to see a doctor, and as I has been turned
at a fruity five degree angle and his name is
(39:31):
John Rambo is crazy. She said. He was relieved six
months later while the white static he was seeing slowly
started to return and he had normal vision once again.
That's outcome bias. If I've ever seen it, cringe, if
you experienced any squeamish feelings, I consider it his story
well told. Yeah, well well told story that that is
(39:54):
from Lena or Lina in California for California boy, I
don't know. Her dad has made us some tough stuff.
If he did not go to a doctor, he's like hero,
not our simo. Hia. Yeah, it's crazy. So uh did
somebody else wrote in and got me um about having
(40:15):
to get shots like up their nose? That one got
me too, So whoever wrote in with that one hats
off well. At least this guy or got a great
nickname out of old river water socket Jimmy the Mouthful. Uh.
If you have a crunch risy story, keep it to yourself,
send us something else in via tweet to s y
(40:38):
s K podcast, or join us on Facebook dot com
slash stuff you should Know, send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at house to works dot com and has
always joined us at at home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works from More
podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart radio app,
(40:59):
Apple Podcasts, and where ever you listen to your favorite shows.
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