I read a news story about a guy who died from rabies after receiving a kidney transplant. Although nobody was aware when he died, the donor of the kidney had contracted rabies after being scratched by a skunk several weeks before he died and his organs were harvested.

I got curious about how the donor got scratched by the skunk, but instead only found this article from August, which informed me that the U.S. has a rabies outbreak, and has more deaths from rabies in the last year than several previous years…

Not sure if people were already talking about this outbreak, and I just missed it? It’s been a bit of a weird year, and there’s been a lot of crazy shit to keep up with.

Anyway, this is also how I ended up reading the sentence informing me some people are worried dogs are getting autism from vaccines.

Outbreaks of rabies seem to be rising across the U.S., CDC surveillance shows

  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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    12 hours ago

    We humans are victims of our own success. Vaccines work so good at eradicating diseases that people haven’t been exposed to the horrors that we used to. My family has a story about someone loosely related who contracted rabies and was chained to a tree until they died a few weeks later. This was no more than a generation before me!

    People really aren’t scared enough of diseases.

    • ngdev@lemmy.zip
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      11 hours ago

      im calling bullshit on whoever told you that. im pretty sure ive heard that same story. also, rabies causes fear of water so theyd likely die of dehydration way sooner

      • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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        10 hours ago

        Checking back in.

        Rabies sufferers die from encephalopathic hemorrhaging way before dehydration. So I guess I’m not remembering the timeline accurately.

      • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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        11 hours ago

        Eh, maybe. But it served its purpose and scared the shit out of me. I’m curious if rabies sufferers will dehydrate themselves to the point of death. Another wiki hole, here I come!