macabre, rabies

Pose S2E3 was macabre. I wasn't at all expecting that from this show, even after glancing at the episode description beforehand, and doing a double-take. I'm having trouble getting it out of my mind (and mentioning it here in a post won't help that, but oh well).

I'm somewhat relieved that, as indicated at the above link, the show writers didn't come up with the plot-line totally out of the blue.

..

Rabies Kills Tens of Thousands Yearly. Vaccinating Dogs Could Stop It.

Reading that reminded me I meant to write about rabies a while back. This is macabre too, but I suppose one ought to be aware of it.

From Carolina Wildlife Center's Spring 2019 Newsletter:

When you interact with wildlife animals you may be putting their life in danger.
This is especially true of Rabies Vector animals such as raccoons, foxes, bats and skunks.
...
If you must handle the animal you should use heavy gloves to avoid scratches or bites and avoid contact with saliva in your eyes, nose, mouth and open wounds. All three can transmit the virus. We stress the importance of extreme caution because if you are scratched, bitten or contact saliva, the animal must be tested for rabies, whether suspected of infection or not. There is only one way to test for rabies and it requires euthanizing the animal. If a Rabies Vector animals tests positive and you were scratched, bitten or contacted saliva, you will need to have the post-exposure rabies treatment. This is expensive and very unpleasant. Worst of all, a healthy animal may have lost its life to ensure you will not lose yours.

Rabies Testing: Things Better Left Unsaid

For [non-Rabies-Vector] animals that have bitten a person, a 10-day quarantine is the usual way of determining if they have rabies. ... The logic behind the 10-day stretch that you pay for is that very, very few animals that are rabid and shedding virus in saliva will live past 10 days. If your dog bites you or someone else and survives for longer than 10 days, the chances that your dog was rabid at the time of the bite are essentially nil.
...
Sure, you don’t want your pet to get rabies, but the public health folks are more concerned with making sure your dog doesn’t catch rabies from a fox who was in the back yard and then passing it on to every kid in the neighborhood. Thus, the rabies vaccine was invented and has become the only legally mandated vaccine for pets; other vaccines, for diseases like parvo and distemper, are medically necessary for the pets but don’t play a role in public health.
...
When we euthanize a pet that has bitten someone recently, there is obviously no chance to see if the pet would survive the 10-day period. Using the example of the injured dog that has bitten her owner, if the dog has a broken back and the owner elects to euthanize, we don’t know if the dog was rabid when she bit her owner.
...
The only definitive way to determine if an animal had rabies is to examine the brain. This is impossible to do while alive. Blood and other ante-mortem (before death) tests are not reliable enough when a human life is on the line. This means cutting the head off and submitting it to a state lab for rabies testing. This testing is not optional if your pet is not currently vaccinated for rabies. If an unvaccinated animal bites a human and then either dies or is euthanized, the head must, by law, be submitted for testing.

CDC article on rabies :

Skunks, raccoons, foxes and bats that bite humans should be euthanized and tested as soon as possible. The length of time between rabies virus appearing in the saliva and onset of symptoms is unknown for these animals and holding them for observation is not acceptable.

That explains why there isn't a 10-day quarantine for them, as with dogs.

So to summarize, you should be very careful when interacting with raccoons, foxes, bats, and skunks, even young ones which appear to be orphaned or in distress. In trying to help them, if you happen to be bitten or scratched, it could likely end up with the animal being euthanized to undergo this mandatory rabies testing. (Or if you don't tell anyone, you could risk coming down with rabies yourself.)