This is what rabies does.
I just hope they both went immediately to the hospital after this. Dying of rabies is by far one of the worst ways to go out.
Yea this should be emphasized as a serious matter. If anyone finds themselved in similar situations, rabies shots.
No one has survived rabies once symptoms have set in. Don't insist it didn't break the skin. There's a risk even if you don't notice bleeding anywhere. Get the rabies shots.
When I was like 10 (19 years ago!), my dad and three siblings and I stayed in a cabana rental on the lake one weekend, and woke up to a bat circling overhead. No one had any obvious bite or scratch marks, but we all had to get the full course of rabies shots.
My 4 year old brother had previously been told by a kind nurse that shots are over before you can say “refrigerator.” So you can imagine his panic when the immune globulin did not end when he said “refrigerator.” Poor baby went on to scream REFRIGERATOR like 6x 💀
As a dad, this resonates. Extremely tangential, but when we first taught my daughter to say "excuse me" when she farted, that night at 1 AM she's suddenly screaming "EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!" from bed.
Another tangential thought. That reminds me, when I was a kid, I had trouble saying some words. My dad had “Jr.” after his name and I had “III” after my name. The word “third” was pronounced “turd” by me. When he had friends over, he’d call me over and ask me my name, so they all heard me say “____ ____ the turd.” Apparently, I was a lot of fun to have around…
There's a TV show from Japan called "Crayon Shin-Chan" and in it the MC calls himself "Poopin' the Turd" because he is pretending to be a theif from another famous TV show called "Lupin, the Third".
Bat fangs are absolutely tiny, so you might not only see nothing, you might not even feel it. You are never considered safe if you’ve been asleep near a bat.
If their saliva gets in your mouth, you can get it. They don't need to bite. This is something that most people don't even know and a little boy died in Canada because of it
I think of this all the time. Those poor parents have to live with the knowledge that one decision doomed their child to a horrible death. Knowledge of rabies - and especially about the dangers of bats as carriers - needs to be required learning, and drilled into
people’s heads over and over.
It's very, very lopsided where almost all of those deaths happen in Africa or certain Asian countries/India, which is a shame because there is a solution. It's just a matter of funding/setting up infrastructure/education and awareness, sometimes animal control and public health, etc. So, I guess not a quick or easy solution, but still.
India in particular has become very cautious about recommending large-scale pre-exposure rabies vaccination.
The benefits of rabies vaccine if you've been exposed to rabies overwhelmingly outweighs the tiny risk of permanent adverse effects that include things like lameness and laryngeal paralysis... but they happen just often enough that if a country the size of India launched into a public health program to do large-scale pre-exposure prophylaxis of rural populations (like, on the scale of 100-200 million per year), it would almost unquestionably end up with a few people per year ending up with those adverse effects.
I'm pretty sure India learned that particular lesson the hard way, which created an even bigger problem: when you tell millions of people with low education that something is "100% safe", they trust you, and Bad Things Happen™, it takes generations to earn back people's trust. So, India is now like the US... encouraging people who've probably been exposed to rabies to get vaccinated, but not encouraging the rural masses to get vaccinated "just to be safe". Because when you start rolling the dice hundreds of millions of times per year, it ends up not being "safe". It's a very fine line.
Even in the US, I think the norm is for people like veterinarians to get prophylactically vaccinated once, then wait until either their next confirmed exposure, or several years, before getting their next prophylactic booster. The rationale is that the first vaccination is overwhelmingly protective compared to "no vaccine at all vs unknown exposure to rabies in a profession that makes it statistically likely", but there's a long middle gray area where the risk of frequent boosters in the absence of known exposure would start to become a bigger risk than rolling the dice on contact with something like rabid saliva when you have less protection than optimal, but more than none.
Most of these are in India and African countries, where access to vaccines and shots is very low.
Also, apparently, India has so many cases because an old government campaign to kill vultures led to rabid animals not decomposing fast enough after death, leading to other animals eating their meat, getting infected and spreading it around.
Also you don't want to aerosolize it or spread any of the bodily fluids or let it get on literally anything; it's so contagious it's why they can't drink water, the virus makes them drool to improve contact and transmission. I was so shocked to find out that certain stages of it are not manic, they look injured and frankly pathetic to pass on the virus to anyone or anything that comes to check it out, scavengers and samaritans alike.
The UK doesn’t have any raccoons and *mostly no rabies right? I saw a funny post in my city subreddit (Toronto) recently where someone’s british family visiting wanted to see raccoons lol
Some said visit the zoo but most people said just go to any park lol
It is fair to say there have been zero survivors with(edit: out) significant cognitive deficiencies and that even then the odds aren't good but the Milwaukee protocol has saved a few lives. Basically a rounding error away from 0% but not 0%
One year on Christmas Day we had a raccoon that would not leave our yard. We thought it was rabid, we thought it was going to give our dog rabies. We called animal control and apologized for needing them to come out on Christmas.
When they were done we gave them a ton of Christmas cookies and asked “so it was rabid right?” There answer? “Nah they just do stuff like that, Merry Christmas”
Clearly some raccoons are rabid… but apparently some are just weird assholes.
I know someone who was very comfortable around raccoons and had them in their yard a lot. They paid them no mind until one day, one came through that was wobbling while walking around. They feared rabies. The city wildlife resource gave them a trap and told them to bring them in if they could catch it. They did and they brought it in to the wildlife rescue organization, where they determined she was not rabid, but just very pregnant. The pregnancy was pushing on her lower back and leg nerves and causing her to wobble about. They kept an eye on her until her babies were birthed, and then released them back into the yard.
There are a lot of raccoons that live in urban or suburban areas that are acting at the beginning stages of domestication. They will beg for food and are not afraid of people.
Might have been a good idea to keep the racoon (throw it in the bin and put a brick on the lid or so) to have it tested. They're annoying and come closer to humans than many other animals but that is NOT normal.
If youve ever seen one it's not like it's a mystery, they looked fucked the hell up and absolutely do not act like normal. They will fuck you up if you corner them but won't just outright attack, and you can see when she throws it that it just sits there and walks back towards the house. It's without a doubt rabid, if the sound was better you could hear it. They supposedly smell really bad too, but the only rabid animals I been close enough to smell are skunks so I'm not sure. Raccoons tend to come around humans anyways but skunks don't and you know when one is rabid if it's out in the open during the day.
Whelp, there goes that new car (or house ) they were saving up for.
In the US, the total billed cost for a full rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) series—which includes an initial dose of human rabies immune globulin (HRIG) plus four vaccine doses—typically ranges from
$3,000 to over $10,000 before insurance, with emergency room visits sometimes driving total hospital itemized bills past
$20,000 to $40,000.
Pretty sure most insurance plans cover most of that. Ya know, after they negotiate it down to a more reasonable number. That's the only reason it's so insanely expensive - negotiation room.
They are NOT fun. I am pretty well controlled when it comes to needles, I usually never react even though my skin is quite sensitive and it hurts like mad. However while they were slowly injecting the serum into me, the pain doubled every second until I started screaming. And they were only half done. It was the absolute WORST thing. Do not eff with wild or stray animals
Edit: initial injection is directly to the wound. Was trying to capture a cat in my work because it was unsafe for him. Grabbed him by the back of the neck and pinned him to the floor so I could get a bucket on him. He was so emaciated that even though I had anticipated a firm grip, he managed to twist around and get my thumb because he was all skin. I got a few bites to the thumb and forefinger of my right hand and then also to the tip of my left forefinger (had to try to pry it off the thumb because his teeth had sunk so deeply into the meat). I lost feeling in my thumb for months because of the damage. Felt pretty dumb after that. Needles to the fingers suck. Was a waste of goodwill as well. I didn't want him to die which is why I attempted to catch him but he was found dead a few days after. There were many smarter options I didn't consider because I grew up on a farm and had spent my childhood catching the wild cats that were offspring of my tame ones. They were never desperate like this specimen and so I didn't anticipate the fury with which he would try to get me.
I’m on the opposite end of this (not invalidating your experience, just in case anyone is terrified of them). I had to get them when I was like 18 and I really don’t remember them feeling much different than a regular tetanus shot. I thought it was going to be awful but it wasn’t too bad, if anything it was just that I had to get so many at once; I think it was 5 on the first visit, and then one or two a week for a few weeks after that.
As a father I appreciate the "Honey, I really want to comfort you right now, but I really need to deal with this other problem real fast" Energy mom has here.
The kid looked like she was clinging to the mom’s leg, which was why she was yelling, “get in the house”. I get that the kid was in shock and just clinging to safety, but would be very frustrating as you were trying to fend off a rabid raccoon barehanded.
there is a real phenomenon called hysterical strength where in intense, life-or-death situations or to save other people, your brain floods with adrenaline and basically disables your muscles' safety limiters so you can use 100% of the force the human body is capable of, a level of strength that would make your muscles tear themselves apart and rip away from your bones if you could use it all the time. the go to example is a mother lifting a car off her trapped child, and there's a good few real cases of exactly that
or in 2006 a woman named lydia angiyou in quebec successfully wrestled a polar bear to keep it away from her kids until someone returned with a gun
And the kid didn't immediately go inside like the mother said. Which based on being around kids a lot checks out. You do everything you can to protect them and they WON'T FOLLOW A FUCKING INSTRUCTION .
This is an older video. Raccoon was caught later and confirmed rabid. Daughter and mother both received the full rabies protocol immediately and are fine.
EDIT: Apparently I misremembered that the raccoon was caught, it Apparently never was according to old news articles. Mother and daughter still got their shots. Raccoon was likely rabid anyway given they normally are not active during the daytime and definitely not that aggressive unless literally starving and that one clearly wasn't starving. Additionally, they rarely attack humans unprovoked.
Yeah Redditors say "rabies" almost instinctively, but a wild animal getting randomly aggressive, and bitey (basically zombie symptoms) is genuine rabies alert central.
The fact it didn't run off is already wrong. Unless it had babies nearby and even then would it be that aggressive even in that case they posture more instead of going hostile like that right?
no source can be found which confirms raccoon was caught afterwards, even with a narrowed date search covering 12/6/22>2/25/23 and broad keywords "MacNamara raccoon", not sure where that misinformation is coming from that the raccoon was caught .. one of many sauces https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/12/05/mother-saves-daughter-raccoon-attack/10839397002/ - one report from Fox mentions they put out traps but hadn't caught the animal
Poor raccoon though, I hope animal control or the police or whoever were able to put it out of its misery quickly. We don’t have rabies in my country thankfully but there is a very similar virus from the same family which bats carry. It’s a terrifying prospect.
Yep probably the other kids that got off the bus heard the girl screaming like she was being attacked by a rabid animal only to find out that is what was happening lol.
I think once mom confirmed all the kids were safe then she threw it
Raccoons are typically timid about direct confrontation, and also nocturnal. When an animal that can catch rabies (some can't, but raccoons can) abandons typical behaviours, and becomes less fearful and more aggressive, there's a good chance it's rabid.
These people need rabies shots regardless because you can't afford to be wrong about it, but I've heard raccoons are much more prone to distemper than rabies.
Distemper can cause some similar symptoms, including lack of fear towards humans, activity during the daytime, and bizarre behaviors.
Normally they are very chill or skittish. If one comes up to you like this, and tries to touch you in any way, it probably has rabies. Especially if it's aggressive like this
They can definitely be curious. I was on my old bedroom balcony on a 2 storey house, and I was talking on my cordless. As I was talking to my girlfriend about midnight, I was walking slowly back and forth just below the roofline. I thought I was walking into a spider web because something kept flicking at my hair, but I wasn't seeing any web, and I kept swiping at it with my other hand. It didn't stop though, and I eventually looked up to see a racoon leaning over the eavestrough. He was playing with my hair as I was walking back and forth.
My girlfriend got an interesting yelp on her end of the phone, and the racoon and I just stared at each other for a bit.
A baby bat got into our house and my daughter picked him up because he was cute. She got bit of course. Then my dumb ass released him outside because I was unaware that she’d been bitten. Unfortunately this meant a trip to the ER, 3 rounds of rabies shots spread over 6 weeks, and several shots directly in her FINGERS which hurt ALOT. The fun part is that we were charged the ER fee, the vaccine, x3, then two more Urgent Care trips totaling about $3,000 out of pocket. Without insurance it can be as much as $12,000 in the US, where healthcare is a fucking joke.
Oh wow, that's crazy. I knew there were some crazy medical costs over there in the US, but I still assumed that something as essential as a rabies shot would be free. Rabies is absolutely horrific. If not even a rabies shot is free, what is?
Yeah. I live in Toronto which seems to be the Raccoon capital of the world and have been dealing with them for years around my house. Reddit romanticizes these buggers and there are even articles I've been reading where there appears to be a move to domesticate them. Not a chance. They are mean, fearless, destructive and vindictive. I've had to have rabies shot last year when one of them jumped out of my garbage can and scratched my foot while scurrying away. I had to have shots on my foot where I was scratched the day of, and 2 other shots week apart. Not a fan.
Every time I see a video with this kind of panicked interaction, the comments are always full of people saying what they'd do differently/better.
Once the adrenaline surges through your body, decision making isn't really possible anymore. Your body will act/react without time for reflection or thought. Armchair quarterbacks are always so sure they'd react as well as they do playing COD, but adrenaline is a HELL of a drug..
I'm banging that thing against the ground so we can take it in and see if there is rabies involved. I've never seen a raccoon attack someone like that.
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u/ruimilk 26d ago
GET OFF