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SYSK Selects: How Rabies Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Chuck here for your Saturday select. If you
0:03
Speaker 1: ever wanted to know how Rabies works, we talked about
0:06
Speaker 1: it in great detail from February nine, two thousand sixteen.
0:10
Speaker 1: Give it a tryway, don't you not Rabies? That is?
0:13
Speaker 1: But this podcast episode How Rabies Works. Welcome to Stuff
0:18
Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How
0:21
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:30
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck, Bryant, Jerry and stuff you should know.
0:36
Speaker 1: You're bombing at the mouth, Jerry, don't let him bite you,
0:41
Speaker 1: all right, you bet, Jerry. I'm gonna have to put
0:43
Speaker 1: both of you down like Old Yeller. Let's do. It's
0:46
Speaker 1: about time. I knew from day one when we started
0:49
Speaker 1: working together that this is how it would conclude. Yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: me shooting both of you because of brabies wittness down
0:56
Speaker 1: old Yellow Wait wait, speaking of Old Yeller, I'm sorry.
1:00
Speaker 1: Have you seen the kids in the hall take on
1:02
Speaker 1: Old Yeller? I don't think so. Yeah, Paul makes the
1:09
Speaker 1: kid shoot the dog and he's his face is sprayed
1:12
Speaker 1: with blood from the gunshot wound. So wonderful. Yeah, worst
1:17
Speaker 1: children's book ever. Oh, I guess we just spoiled it. Huh.
1:21
Speaker 1: Everyone knows Old Yeller gets rabies and is shot. Yeah,
1:25
Speaker 1: I don't even bother emailing him. But there is a
1:27
Speaker 1: happy ending. Uh. You know, Old Yeller has pups and
1:30
Speaker 1: they get a pup, so instead of like coming back
1:33
Speaker 1: as a ghost dog, that like helps things turn out
1:37
Speaker 1: well for the family. It left a legacy in the
1:41
Speaker 1: Dawkinsian view right, still the worst children's book ever, although
1:47
Speaker 1: it teaches valuable life lessons about death. Why you gotta
1:51
Speaker 1: do that by killing Old Yeller? I don't know, but
1:54
Speaker 1: I mean it works all right. Rabies, I don't know.
2:00
Speaker 1: I thought we'd done this one. It seems like an
2:02
Speaker 1: obvious one for us. Uh. Yeah, it's definitely in our
2:05
Speaker 1: wheelhouse for sure. Um. I did not know this either.
2:08
Speaker 1: It is a virus on every continent in the world
2:12
Speaker 1: except Antarctica, which a lot of viruses that hold that
2:16
Speaker 1: that title that aren't on Antarctica inhospitable place. And if
2:22
Speaker 1: a virus is on every continent, chances are it's a
2:25
Speaker 1: very old one too, and rabies definitely is extremely old. Um.
2:29
Speaker 1: People have been writing about rabies for a very long time.
2:32
Speaker 1: The Mesopotamians who know it's old if you say that word. Sure. Um.
2:37
Speaker 1: They used to have a law where if your dog
2:40
Speaker 1: was rabid, you faced the stiff penalty, a fine of sorts.
2:43
Speaker 1: We have those laws today in the United States. I
2:46
Speaker 1: mean a lot of our laws stem from Mesopotamian, the
2:48
Speaker 1: code of Hammurabi. You know, like if you watch somebody's
2:52
Speaker 1: house burned down and don't do anything, that person can
2:55
Speaker 1: kill you. Still today, just like from the Code of Hammurabi.
2:59
Speaker 1: So if you're neighbor's house on fire, you have to
3:01
Speaker 1: put it out. You have to help put it out.
3:02
Speaker 1: In Mesopotamia. Uh So, the word rabies um in many
3:09
Speaker 1: languages means um a rage or go crazy. Um. In
3:14
Speaker 1: Latin it is from a Sanskrit term robajas to do violence.
3:19
Speaker 1: And then French uh laaragee it's the sexiest form of
3:26
Speaker 1: rabies comes from the French now and robert, meaning to
3:30
Speaker 1: go mad. So if you're not picking up on it. Um,
3:34
Speaker 1: it's not a friendly virus. No, it's not the one
3:38
Speaker 1: that you get a dog. Well, actually we'll talk about that.
3:41
Speaker 1: I'm gonna save it. And for a long time, I mean,
3:43
Speaker 1: there was nothing we could do about rabies. Yeah, Um,
3:48
Speaker 1: people went to Liege Belgium to pray to um sat Hubert. Yeah,
3:54
Speaker 1: it's a round name, isn't it not. Yeah. St. Hubert
3:58
Speaker 1: was the patron saint of Huntsman. Okay, and uh not
4:01
Speaker 1: quality footwear. No, and apparently apparently no, that was St.
4:05
Speaker 1: Clark apparently um St Hubbands. Actually I've not heard of that.
4:10
Speaker 1: It's a spinal tap joke. You never get my spinal
4:12
Speaker 1: tap jokes. No, I need to see it more than once.
4:15
Speaker 1: Apparently there for the people out there, that's fine. There's
4:18
Speaker 1: like a hundred dudes. We'll just I'll sit here and
4:20
Speaker 1: be the straight man. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah,
4:23
Speaker 1: Derek St. Hubbands was the patron state of his ancestors.
4:26
Speaker 1: Patron stated of quality footwear. Great joke. That is a
4:29
Speaker 1: good joke, man, I'm sorry stepped all over it. Um
4:34
Speaker 1: so in leaves you would go and pray to St.
4:36
Speaker 1: Hubert for protection. Probably not the most effective way to
4:40
Speaker 1: treat rabies. No, I don't blame people for making a
4:43
Speaker 1: pilgrimage to lead. From what I understand about rabies based
4:47
Speaker 1: on researching this, it's terrible. Yeah, it's horrific and fatal.
4:52
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until the late nineteenth century eighteen eighty
4:54
Speaker 1: five when the late great Louis Pasteur man, this dude,
4:59
Speaker 1: he would, didn't that guy do to save the world? Yeah,
5:01
Speaker 1: we should. He's up in our line. And now we
5:04
Speaker 1: have a kind of ongoing line of like great scientists. Uh,
5:08
Speaker 1: so we will include him on the list. And we
5:10
Speaker 1: need to start acknowledging the ladies too, So Madam Curie,
5:14
Speaker 1: sure we've got our eye on you. That's right, that's right.
5:17
Speaker 1: Uh and um. Anyway, so Louis Pasture came up with
5:20
Speaker 1: a vaccine for rabies, and he was he was one
5:24
Speaker 1: of the early germ theory guys. He was very president person.
5:30
Speaker 1: His his inoculation trials were based on the idea that
5:35
Speaker 1: if you introduced some like a low level of rabies
5:40
Speaker 1: to a living being, that living being would produce anybody's
5:45
Speaker 1: and you could introduce increasingly larger amounts over time, and
5:50
Speaker 1: eventually the person's antibodies would be robust enough so that
5:54
Speaker 1: if they ever faced rabies in the wild, they would
5:57
Speaker 1: be able to fight it off. And he was absolutely
6:00
Speaker 1: and what a crazy thing to think, though, you know,
6:02
Speaker 1: it is when no one knows anything about germ theory
6:05
Speaker 1: to think like, why don't we put the disease in
6:07
Speaker 1: the person, Maybe that'll help cure it. And I think
6:11
Speaker 1: I think that was around for a while, but I
6:14
Speaker 1: think it was like some arcane knowledge that not everyone
6:16
Speaker 1: knew about, and past Year really capitalized that amazing. Um.
6:20
Speaker 1: But he actually had been working on something using rabbits
6:23
Speaker 1: as test cases and was basically he proved it can
6:27
Speaker 1: work in humans by by a boy who had been
6:31
Speaker 1: attacked by a dog, I think, and contracted rabies. Um,
6:34
Speaker 1: and uh, Louis past your said, here goes nothing, and
6:39
Speaker 1: he's stuck in with the shot. And the parents went
6:41
Speaker 1: and here goes nothing. Right, he goes no nothing, And
6:44
Speaker 1: they said, well, you said this was gonna work. I said,
6:47
Speaker 1: no such thing. It's good, Louis, thank you. It's technically
6:52
Speaker 1: that Um the text, you know, the U Chuck Jones
6:57
Speaker 1: version of Napoleon when bugs bunnies hang out with him.
7:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's how I learned to do a French
7:02
Speaker 1: accent Chuck, the Great Chuck Jones. Uh so, rabies. Let's
7:08
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what it does in your body. Um,
7:11
Speaker 1: it's really pretty vicious. It It is a viral disease.
7:14
Speaker 1: Like we said, at the top and it attacks the
7:16
Speaker 1: central nervous system, the brain and the central nervous system. Um.
7:20
Speaker 1: It is part of the rab dough vera day yeah family.
7:26
Speaker 1: Under the genus you take the genus the lie of
7:29
Speaker 1: virus that was too easy. It was easy, um and
7:32
Speaker 1: its shaped like a bullet and when it comes in
7:35
Speaker 1: the body, it basically goes as fast as it can
7:39
Speaker 1: to the spinal cord yeah um through something called afferent nerves.
7:43
Speaker 1: With an A they carry impulses towards the central nervous system,
7:47
Speaker 1: as opposed to efferent with an E they carry impulses away,
7:50
Speaker 1: but it uses both. So this virus travels along um
7:54
Speaker 1: the neural pathways through the central nervous system, and it
7:57
Speaker 1: goes immediately to the central nervous to the spinal cord
8:01
Speaker 1: and then up to the brain yea. And in the
8:03
Speaker 1: brain that's where it replicates. You remember, like HIV replicates
8:08
Speaker 1: inside t helper cells. Well, rabies is a virus that
8:12
Speaker 1: replicates inside your neurons, your brain cells, which is not
8:17
Speaker 1: a good place for a virus to start doing. It's
8:20
Speaker 1: replicating right and right after it starts replicating in the brain,
8:24
Speaker 1: it makes a second stop a very important stop to
8:27
Speaker 1: your salivary glands. And the reason it does that is
8:29
Speaker 1: because that is the number one mechanism of transmission for rabies. Yeah,
8:33
Speaker 1: that's when you see the foaming at the mouth. It's
8:35
Speaker 1: not just a uh symptom of rabies. But that's the
8:39
Speaker 1: main way that you're going to get it is by
8:42
Speaker 1: being bitten by something with all kinds of nasty rabid saliva.
8:48
Speaker 1: And apparently because this stuff is um wrecking your brain
8:53
Speaker 1: by hijacking your brain cells and destroying them. There's two
8:56
Speaker 1: different versions of rabies, right and step latic, which is
9:01
Speaker 1: also known as the furious form of rabies. That's the
9:03
Speaker 1: one you think of when you think of a crazy
9:06
Speaker 1: rabid dog that's hallucinating and running around in circles and
9:10
Speaker 1: chasing its tail and biting at the air. UM old
9:14
Speaker 1: yeller basically, although they toned it down a bit, they
9:17
Speaker 1: did because they didn't want to scare the kids before
9:20
Speaker 1: they shot. And then there's a paralytic or dumb form,
9:26
Speaker 1: and that one is more like lapsing into coma basically, UM,
9:31
Speaker 1: and I don't know. Surely there's no way to predict
9:35
Speaker 1: which way that the things the virus is going to
9:38
Speaker 1: go in a human right, because it's destroying brain cells.
9:42
Speaker 1: I would think it would just be totally accidental whether
9:45
Speaker 1: it went towards the enciphalatic or the the um paralytic form.
9:49
Speaker 1: That's a good question, you know, it would just depend
9:50
Speaker 1: on where it lodges first. Right, Yeah, but both of
9:54
Speaker 1: the forms are in the acute stage. UM. And here's
9:57
Speaker 1: what's so scary. Once it's in the acute stage, once
10:00
Speaker 1: let's hit your central nervous system, you're done. It's almost
10:05
Speaker 1: exclusively done. And we'll talk about that. That's that is
10:08
Speaker 1: the for a very for millennia. The UM this the
10:13
Speaker 1: idea behind rabies is like it was, it's a fatal disease, fatal,
10:18
Speaker 1: except now they've started to find a few cases here
10:21
Speaker 1: there that's not the case. And that's they're starting to wonder, Okay,
10:25
Speaker 1: is this something we could treat after people are traditionally goners.
10:30
Speaker 1: Well that's a great tease. So let's uh take a
10:33
Speaker 1: break and we'll come back right after this with moron rabies. Okay,
10:57
Speaker 1: So we mentioned the two forms. They're both in the
10:59
Speaker 1: acute state age and apparently both stages can happen uh
11:05
Speaker 1: in a single case. It's not necessarily one of the other. Right,
11:07
Speaker 1: it makes sense, like if this region of your brain
11:10
Speaker 1: is wrecked and you're furious and raging, well eventually it's
11:13
Speaker 1: going to get to the part of your brain where
11:15
Speaker 1: you're like you can't move or breathe and you slip
11:17
Speaker 1: into a coma and die of respiratory distress, you know.
11:20
Speaker 1: But also got the impression that wasn't necessarily like that's
11:23
Speaker 1: the path, Like it can start in the dumb stage
11:25
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like it would
11:27
Speaker 1: just depend on where the virus, what part of your
11:29
Speaker 1: brain the virus coast to it's got to you know. Yeah.
11:32
Speaker 1: Um was something I didn't realize about Raby's chuck was
11:35
Speaker 1: that it's exclusive to mammals. I knew that I didn't um,
11:39
Speaker 1: but I also have wondered over the years, LIKEWI, isn't
11:42
Speaker 1: like a rabid squirrel would be your worst nightmare, I imagine,
11:46
Speaker 1: you know, because they'll already come at you. Yeah, you know,
11:49
Speaker 1: and a rabid one would definitely come out You're one
11:51
Speaker 1: of the One of the um traits of or symptoms
11:55
Speaker 1: of rabid mammal is that a wild one has no
11:59
Speaker 1: fear of humans. Yeah, they're aggressive. Um. In fact, there's
12:03
Speaker 1: a case I looked up, as I often do, just
12:05
Speaker 1: in the news, and little boy in New Jersey just
12:08
Speaker 1: this week was attacked by raccoon. This raccoon leapt onto
12:13
Speaker 1: his back while he was walking down the street during
12:16
Speaker 1: the day. And we will get to the hallmarks. But
12:19
Speaker 1: that's very important. If you see a nocturnal animal cruising
12:21
Speaker 1: around during the day at great speeds, stay away. Oh
12:26
Speaker 1: you're not supposed see raccoons in the neighborhood during the day. Yeah,
12:29
Speaker 1: just go get your pause. Bb gun. Well I don't
12:31
Speaker 1: know about that, but call animal control and they'll get there.
12:34
Speaker 1: Be begun. Um. But yeah, this little boy was was
12:37
Speaker 1: this raccoon jumped on his back and started biting his
12:40
Speaker 1: face and neck. Where did you learn to pronounced raccoon? Raccoon?
12:46
Speaker 1: Now I say raccoon. That's just one of my jokes.
12:50
Speaker 1: People don't know though. When I said Alex Baldwin, I know,
12:53
Speaker 1: people literally wrote in like like it's Alec, how did
12:57
Speaker 1: you miss thirty Rock? And Alec Baldwin said, I don't care. Yeah,
13:01
Speaker 1: I don't know who this chuck is. So anyway, um, yeah,
13:05
Speaker 1: you're right. Um, the little boy I think is gonna
13:08
Speaker 1: be okay, which is a good news, but it's uh, well,
13:12
Speaker 1: we'll get to the rarity of it. Plus he was
13:14
Speaker 1: attacked in New Jersey, which is in the U s.
13:17
Speaker 1: Which means he's going to be just fine. Right, But
13:20
Speaker 1: a long way of saying that UM, squirrels and mice
13:24
Speaker 1: and and other smaller animals typically don't get it, and
13:27
Speaker 1: it makes good sense. It's because if they are attacked
13:30
Speaker 1: by a rabid animal, they're they're small and probably won't survive.
13:33
Speaker 1: Like they could very well get rabies. Every sign says
13:37
Speaker 1: they can, but they'll probably pour A little mouse will
13:40
Speaker 1: probably just die, right, because if a raccoon gets its
13:42
Speaker 1: hands on a mouse, it's all over and it bites it.
13:45
Speaker 1: That saliva is gonna be transmitted to the wound. But
13:48
Speaker 1: you also need the host to be alive for the
13:51
Speaker 1: virus to replicate in that host. Exactly if their neck
13:54
Speaker 1: is broken and they're dead, then that it's not gonna work.
13:57
Speaker 1: But yeah, absolutely, but what you said, yes, you can
14:00
Speaker 1: get a woodchuck with rabies. Woodchuck's raccoons. Apparently, in the
14:04
Speaker 1: United States, raccoons are the most common vector for the
14:08
Speaker 1: disease UM now yes, uh. But for the most part,
14:13
Speaker 1: it's larger, slight slightly larger small mammals. Does that make sense, woodchucks, raccoons,
14:19
Speaker 1: medium sized mammals, medium size on the smallest side, small
14:24
Speaker 1: to medium, a medium sized mammal. The means like, um,
14:29
Speaker 1: I guess the raccoon, okay uh. And it takes a
14:32
Speaker 1: few months for the disease or when its course in
14:34
Speaker 1: an animal. But the scary thing is it can lie
14:37
Speaker 1: dormant in humans for years, months or years. That's very scary,
14:42
Speaker 1: super scary. Yeah, because you guys don't realize. It's like
14:44
Speaker 1: you think it's like frothing at the mouth or something. No,
14:47
Speaker 1: the rabies virus is one of the scariest viruses on
14:50
Speaker 1: the planet. It is um so, like I said, saliva
14:54
Speaker 1: is the mode of transmission for most rabies cases, and
14:59
Speaker 1: you can catch it very easily. Technically, if you had
15:02
Speaker 1: like an open wound and you like rubbed your finger
15:06
Speaker 1: where the open wound was. I guess I should have
15:09
Speaker 1: specified that earlier. On the saliva of a rabid raccoon
15:13
Speaker 1: you could easily catch right, But that's an uncommon thing
15:17
Speaker 1: to do. You could also if you um took the
15:21
Speaker 1: brain of that raccoon and rubbed it on your open
15:25
Speaker 1: wound to your finger. You could also catch it. Even
15:27
Speaker 1: more uncommon. But if you came across a raccoon's poop
15:31
Speaker 1: that was rabid and you took it and just rubbed
15:34
Speaker 1: it all over your hands, the camouflage, the scent of
15:36
Speaker 1: your hand probably the most uncommon, you would not catch rabies.
15:41
Speaker 1: That's what the good news. Yeah, it doesn't transfer in
15:43
Speaker 1: the feces or the blood or the p Yeah, the urine,
15:49
Speaker 1: the pp uh. Oh man, it's been p fest at
15:54
Speaker 1: my house. You want a little quick side story. I
15:56
Speaker 1: changed the litter box before I went to Birmingham, and
16:00
Speaker 1: four days later we realized that I didn't put litter
16:03
Speaker 1: in the litter box. I emptied it, put the lid
16:07
Speaker 1: back on, put it back in, rushed out of the
16:09
Speaker 1: door to drive to Birmingham, and four days later we're like,
16:12
Speaker 1: our cats are sick because they're peeing on everything in
16:14
Speaker 1: the house. Emily went over and she went, hey, well,
16:18
Speaker 1: I won't say what she said. It wasn't hey, honey, Uh,
16:23
Speaker 1: guess what, there's a lake of urine in the litter
16:26
Speaker 1: box and it's all your fault. So we had to
16:30
Speaker 1: throw a lot of things away in our home that
16:32
Speaker 1: previously we're working just fine. Man. And uh, I got
16:36
Speaker 1: the Dummy of the Year award in our house. That's cool.
16:39
Speaker 1: You should instagram that trophy Dummy of the year. Yeah,
16:43
Speaker 1: I just it's a tattoo now on my on my
16:45
Speaker 1: lower back of Alfreddy Newman. So anyway, we've been in
16:49
Speaker 1: urine land. So gross. It is so gross, and cat
16:53
Speaker 1: pea is not you know, it's it's tough to mask.
16:56
Speaker 1: So we're really work lakes of it. Man, what a dummy.
17:02
Speaker 1: So anyway, just the moral of the story is litter
17:06
Speaker 1: is a very important part of the letter box. So
17:09
Speaker 1: and luckily if your cats are rabid, you wouldn't have
17:12
Speaker 1: caught anything from that. No, but I'm sure I have
17:16
Speaker 1: what's it called, what's the cat disease from changing letter? Oh,
17:19
Speaker 1: toxic plasmosis. Gone, I'm sure I've had that for years. Um,
17:24
Speaker 1: that's why you do most of the things you do,
17:26
Speaker 1: that's right. So uh, it is a very adaptive disease. Um.
17:30
Speaker 1: And here's another scary thing, although it's it's not that
17:34
Speaker 1: scary because it's super super rare, but in laboratories it
17:38
Speaker 1: has been transmitted through the air aerosol transmission, and they
17:42
Speaker 1: have found one case where it actually happened in the wild,
17:46
Speaker 1: but it was a cave that had like tens of
17:50
Speaker 1: millions of infected bats like sneezing and coughing up their
17:54
Speaker 1: junk everywhere. And in that case, uh, someone got raby
17:58
Speaker 1: supposedly through through the air. Three people three bucked into
18:01
Speaker 1: the cave in Texas. But that that's uh again, not
18:04
Speaker 1: something you need to worry about. Yeah, but humans can
18:07
Speaker 1: spread it to and remember you can spread it through saliva,
18:11
Speaker 1: which means that if you are kissing, especially kissing with
18:15
Speaker 1: tongue French style, a rabid person, and remember it can
18:20
Speaker 1: take months, if not years for the symptoms to set
18:23
Speaker 1: on UM, you could conceivably catch rabies from that. You
18:28
Speaker 1: can also catch it as an STD through sexual contact.
18:31
Speaker 1: They believe this is the CDC theorizing at this point
18:35
Speaker 1: there's no documented cases UM. And then you could also
18:40
Speaker 1: conceivably catch it from like sharing a cigarette with somebody
18:43
Speaker 1: or drinking after somebody using the same glass. Again in theory,
18:47
Speaker 1: any transmission of shared saliva. But here's the scariest one
18:51
Speaker 1: to me. UM, it has happened before where you get
18:54
Speaker 1: a transplant of an organ, typically a corneal transplant, and
19:00
Speaker 1: get rabies that way. Yeah, it's like we accidentally gave
19:04
Speaker 1: you a cornea with rabies. Yeah. Sorry. And one of
19:09
Speaker 1: the problems do you think, well, how could that possibly happen? Apparently,
19:13
Speaker 1: rabies is very hard to detect, and the main place
19:16
Speaker 1: is to detect it. Remember, it doesn't show up in
19:19
Speaker 1: your blood or anything like that. I know, you're in
19:21
Speaker 1: your feces, is um, in the saliva and in the
19:25
Speaker 1: uh um. Well yeah, and the saliva. It's not even
19:30
Speaker 1: super accurate, and it takes longer. So for the past
19:33
Speaker 1: forty years in the United States, the way they test
19:36
Speaker 1: for rabies if an animal has bit your child as
19:39
Speaker 1: they capture it and they cut its head off and
19:41
Speaker 1: inspect the brain. Right, that's horrifying, it is. But unfortunately,
19:47
Speaker 1: like necessary, I guess of a raccoon bite your kid
19:52
Speaker 1: off with the head. Maybe an animal lover out there
19:56
Speaker 1: who's developing scientists will come up with a better test,
20:01
Speaker 1: more accurate rabies tests that will save the lives of
20:05
Speaker 1: thousands and millions of woodchucks around the world. But I
20:08
Speaker 1: wonder how many times they've been like, oh, thankfully no rabies. Yeah, no,
20:12
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but sorry, your head has cut off. Yeah,
20:15
Speaker 1: Like imagine being the clinician who did that. It's kind
20:18
Speaker 1: of bumm you out. Yeah, absolutely, because it's like this
20:21
Speaker 1: thing's head was cut off because somebody thought it had rabies.
20:25
Speaker 1: Terrible all right, So, um, everybody um knows through popular
20:31
Speaker 1: culture and things like Old Yellow that the foaming of
20:34
Speaker 1: the mouth of a crazy looking dog is a pretty
20:37
Speaker 1: good sign to stay clear. But there are many other ways,
20:41
Speaker 1: especially if they have the dumb form that you might
20:43
Speaker 1: not know. Uh. And here are some of those symptoms
20:46
Speaker 1: partially or fully paralyzed animal loss of appetite, and a
20:51
Speaker 1: lot of these can be confused for other things. Because
20:53
Speaker 1: my dearly deceased dog Lucy probably ticked off about these.
20:58
Speaker 1: She really like pc strange behaviors like snapping at the
21:02
Speaker 1: air or turning in circles. Lucy did that. Nocturnal animals
21:07
Speaker 1: who wander during the day. Um, Like I said, if
21:10
Speaker 1: you see a raccoon walking around during the day, it's
21:12
Speaker 1: not a good sign. Drool excessively. Lucy drooled. Wild animals
21:18
Speaker 1: who showed no fear of humans. Uh. Signs of pikea
21:22
Speaker 1: like eating things that aren't food. Lucy did that all
21:24
Speaker 1: the time. UM, sporadic changes in mood or behavior Lucy
21:30
Speaker 1: restless or aggressive, No, obviously disoriented Lucy. And then a
21:36
Speaker 1: change in voice, which I thought was strange. She was like, uh.
21:43
Speaker 1: And generally it varies by regions, so like maybe here
21:48
Speaker 1: in the South, raccoons or maybe in another place that
21:51
Speaker 1: might be skunks largely right with the animals that have
21:54
Speaker 1: it the most, um. Yeah, but apparently in the United
21:58
Speaker 1: States it's raccoons, for sure, they have the most. But
22:02
Speaker 1: the mode of transmission in the United States UM comes
22:06
Speaker 1: through bats more frequently. Yeah, that's the big these days.
22:11
Speaker 1: So if you get like a hundred bats and a
22:12
Speaker 1: hundred raccoons, more raccoons are going to have rabies. But
22:16
Speaker 1: you're more likely to catch rabies from a bat than
22:18
Speaker 1: a raccoon. Yeah. And why is that. Well, there's a
22:21
Speaker 1: few reasons bats can get into places that raccoons can't.
22:25
Speaker 1: UM and Uh. Bats also have very tiny teeth. Uh.
22:30
Speaker 1: And if you're sleeping in a room and you wake
22:33
Speaker 1: up and there's a bat in it, it's recommended that
22:35
Speaker 1: you kill that bat and take it in for rabies testing. UM.
22:41
Speaker 1: So then they can kill it for you. They can
22:44
Speaker 1: do your dirty work for you. Um. But the reason
22:47
Speaker 1: why is because a bat's teeth are so fine that
22:51
Speaker 1: you can have been bitten in the night and it
22:54
Speaker 1: wouldn't have woken you up. You won't you won't know
22:56
Speaker 1: that you were bitten, but you may have contracted rabies
22:59
Speaker 1: in that case. See are excellent episode on bats, yeah,
23:03
Speaker 1: which which is good because they bats are wonderful. You
23:07
Speaker 1: remember Louisa's came like bat crazy over that one. Yeah,
23:11
Speaker 1: very bat friendly podcast. Yeah, so don't kill it beats.
23:14
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, just look the other way
23:16
Speaker 1: if you see a bat in your room, because something
23:18
Speaker 1: bad is going to happen to that bat. If your dog,
23:21
Speaker 1: we'll take a break after this. But if your dog
23:24
Speaker 1: is potentially bitten by an animal you think it might
23:26
Speaker 1: be rabid, they will be isolated for ten days. Um.
23:31
Speaker 1: And if they make it through that ten days, then
23:33
Speaker 1: you're home free. If they don't, sadly, that means you
23:37
Speaker 1: have to go the old yellow route, except these days
23:40
Speaker 1: it's much more humane. Well I don't know about more humane,
23:42
Speaker 1: but they don't take it behind the bart and shoot it. Yeah, yeah,
23:46
Speaker 1: I mean I would call that more humane. But in
23:49
Speaker 1: you know, rural Texas, they might be like, no, that's
23:52
Speaker 1: quick and easy and painless, just like the shot. What
23:58
Speaker 1: the lethal injection? Yeah, I'm sure that's what they call
24:01
Speaker 1: it in Texas. All right, let's take a break. Then,
24:04
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get your stuff together, get my stuff together,
24:08
Speaker 1: and we'll come back with more rabies. Chuck. You ever
24:30
Speaker 1: been to Bali? Nope, you haven't neither. By well, Bali, um,
24:36
Speaker 1: like Hawaii and some other places around the world, is
24:38
Speaker 1: actually a um. It was a rabies free zone, a
24:43
Speaker 1: place where like no cases of rabies have been reported.
24:47
Speaker 1: They're usually isolated, which makes it hard to get rabies
24:51
Speaker 1: into and they usually also have some um really top
24:55
Speaker 1: Nutch governmental restrictions, like if you try to take a
24:58
Speaker 1: dog in or out of Hawaii, it takes a very
25:01
Speaker 1: long time and a lot of paperwork. And one of
25:03
Speaker 1: the reasons why it's because they don't want rabies coming
25:05
Speaker 1: into their to their state. You're taking momoe Hawaii. No,
25:08
Speaker 1: that's why she would be but no, we basically she
25:12
Speaker 1: would get out of quarantine about the time we were leaving. Gotcha,
25:15
Speaker 1: so um, But my in laws moved and they took
25:18
Speaker 1: their dogs with them and yeah it was a big deal. Yeah,
25:22
Speaker 1: I'm sure. But in Bali specifically, they were rabies free
25:26
Speaker 1: until two thousand and eight, and um, some dogs contracted
25:29
Speaker 1: raybies somehow and bit some people and some people died
25:32
Speaker 1: and it was a big deal. They were great, there
25:35
Speaker 1: goes our rabies free designation. Yeah, so they can get
25:39
Speaker 1: it back though, right, Well yeah, um, the government has
25:41
Speaker 1: been eradicating aggressively the rabies that was found on the island.
25:48
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure if they're doing this. I know
25:49
Speaker 1: they're doing a lot of euthanizing, or they did in
25:52
Speaker 1: the affected areas, But in the United States, um, some
25:56
Speaker 1: wildlife services they're leaving basically what amounts to like a
25:59
Speaker 1: high a dose of um oral rabies vaccine as tasty
26:05
Speaker 1: bait out just out in the woods to try to
26:08
Speaker 1: like control rabies in the raccoon population. Apparently doesn't harm
26:12
Speaker 1: humans or dogs too. And the reason that they're doing
26:15
Speaker 1: this is because they saw what a great work, what
26:19
Speaker 1: a great job at eradicating rabies among dogs in the
26:23
Speaker 1: United States, because it used to be that rabies in
26:26
Speaker 1: the US was very frequently transmitted by dogs and in
26:30
Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of the world, Um, the
26:33
Speaker 1: dogs are still a major mode of transmission, right, but
26:37
Speaker 1: in the US of rabies, vaccination push among um pets
26:43
Speaker 1: has really lowered that that in the in the dog
26:46
Speaker 1: population especially, and push meaning laws. Um. I don't think
26:50
Speaker 1: it's in every state now, but I think most states
26:52
Speaker 1: now required by laws. You're pretty sensible. Yeah, if you
26:56
Speaker 1: have a pet, you should have a non rabid pet. Yeah,
26:59
Speaker 1: like he would say, non know, I don't. I don't
27:02
Speaker 1: want my dog getting that rabies probably. So. Uh, this
27:07
Speaker 1: is the most recent stat we have. In two thousand six,
27:11
Speaker 1: um point zero one one of all rabies cases in
27:16
Speaker 1: the United States were almost said feline were canine eleven
27:22
Speaker 1: thousands of Yeah, so that's virtually nil and I believe Um.
27:27
Speaker 1: In two thousand six that same year, not one case
27:32
Speaker 1: of rabies death came from an American dog, not one
27:36
Speaker 1: case of human raby's death, right correct. Yeah. And then
27:41
Speaker 1: of all us wildlife rabies cases are bats. Yeah, which
27:46
Speaker 1: led to in two thousand six, UM, two of the
27:49
Speaker 1: three rabies related deaths were from bat transmissions bat bites. Yes,
27:55
Speaker 1: could actually let me. I spoke wrong that it wasn't
27:58
Speaker 1: in two thousand six. It was only since n there
28:02
Speaker 1: has not been one case of death from an American
28:04
Speaker 1: dog man, So that's great. They really kind of eradicated
28:07
Speaker 1: that here, that's right. But elsewhere in the world, um, again,
28:12
Speaker 1: catching rabies from being bitten by a dog is still
28:16
Speaker 1: a real problem. As a matter of fact, the World
28:18
Speaker 1: Health Organization called rabies among neglected diseases one of the
28:24
Speaker 1: most most neglected. One of the most neglected among neglected diseases.
28:29
Speaker 1: There's still thirty thousand to seventy thousand people who die
28:33
Speaker 1: every year. It's around one every ten minutes from rabies
28:38
Speaker 1: in the developing world. Like, think about that in the
28:40
Speaker 1: United States, three people died in two thousand and six.
28:43
Speaker 1: That was a bad year. Seventy thousand people as much
28:47
Speaker 1: as seventy thousand people around the world are dying from rabies.
28:51
Speaker 1: And these uh, the countries that have these really high
28:54
Speaker 1: rabies mortality rates and humans are also the ones that
28:58
Speaker 1: usually have um the least amount of money to pay
29:02
Speaker 1: for inoculations and also even further have even less money
29:06
Speaker 1: to inoculate their dogs. So there's a huge push right
29:09
Speaker 1: now among scientists be like, um, the rest of the world,
29:13
Speaker 1: you guys need to pay to eradicate rabies at least
29:16
Speaker 1: in the dog population around the world do something uh.
29:20
Speaker 1: And and also when you have that rural areas, they're
29:23
Speaker 1: not able to get to the clinics to receive those
29:27
Speaker 1: regular inoculations. Yeah, because so Pasteur came up with the
29:30
Speaker 1: rabies vaccine and basically his technique has been only slightly
29:35
Speaker 1: altered over the years. Um, that's still a series of
29:39
Speaker 1: shots in the United States or the West. The ones
29:42
Speaker 1: that we have are five shots over the course of
29:46
Speaker 1: a period of time. And again it's boosting your immunity slowly.
29:51
Speaker 1: And it's a very similar thing in the UH in
29:54
Speaker 1: what did the guy in the in the emails say
29:57
Speaker 1: for the last the last listener mail instead of develo
30:00
Speaker 1: lower income countries, in lower income countries, Um, they they
30:05
Speaker 1: they have a schedule as well. It's not all getting
30:07
Speaker 1: them at once. They have to boost your immunity, and
30:10
Speaker 1: it may not be something like driving down the street
30:12
Speaker 1: to the minute clinic to get this stuff done. You
30:15
Speaker 1: may have to travel quite a ways and again miss
30:17
Speaker 1: some work. So it's a big problem. Yeah, you mentioned
30:21
Speaker 1: pasteurs brilliant idea. He used the it's called an attenuated
30:26
Speaker 1: UH form of rabies. It's it's weakened but still alive
30:29
Speaker 1: that he gathered from spinal cords of animals. These days,
30:32
Speaker 1: they kind of do the same thing, but it is
30:35
Speaker 1: not a live form of the virus. It is a
30:37
Speaker 1: dead form of the virus. But like you said, the
30:39
Speaker 1: same idea is that will give you this slowly and
30:44
Speaker 1: before it reaches your spinal cord. Ideally, Um, ideally, if
30:49
Speaker 1: you want to live, then you've built up the immunity. Hooray. Yeah. Uh,
30:54
Speaker 1: there are some if you have some extra dough in
30:57
Speaker 1: your pocket and want to help out some groups. There's
30:59
Speaker 1: a couple of groups that are working to eradicate rabies
31:02
Speaker 1: in low income countries, like Rita Rabies in the America's
31:06
Speaker 1: and Raby Free Raby's Free World are both working to
31:09
Speaker 1: eradicate rabies elsewhere. Yeah, and if you have been bitten
31:13
Speaker 1: by a animal that you were worried about, um, I
31:17
Speaker 1: would just immediately, you know, if I got bitten by
31:20
Speaker 1: a squirrel or something, I would go to the doctor
31:22
Speaker 1: and just get it checked out, obviously immediately. You don't
31:24
Speaker 1: walk that one off. But here are some oh this
31:28
Speaker 1: a little sting. Oh well, let's just see what happens.
31:32
Speaker 1: Like the man who castrated himself and then sat down
31:34
Speaker 1: to dinner in the nineteenth century. Remember we talked about him.
31:37
Speaker 1: He read his Bible and then ate dinner and then
31:40
Speaker 1: then went to the doctor. Right. Here are some of
31:43
Speaker 1: the symptoms and humans humans human beings, not human beings.
31:48
Speaker 1: I bury it you, rabbit, stomach pain, it's a change
31:51
Speaker 1: in personality. Anxiety, I'm also biting at the air. Uh,
31:56
Speaker 1: stomach pains, anxiety, restlessness, fever. Do you have any this? Nope,
32:00
Speaker 1: Increased aggression, sore throat, excessive saliva, hallucinations, delirium. If that's
32:06
Speaker 1: happening you, you are really like, should go to the doctor. Yeah,
32:10
Speaker 1: coma sporadic pulse. At that point, you should have someone
32:13
Speaker 1: take you to the doctor. And then something called hydrophobia,
32:16
Speaker 1: which we should cover. That used to be a word
32:19
Speaker 1: for rabies. Like you could say that person has rabies,
32:21
Speaker 1: or you could say that person has hydrophobia, and it
32:24
Speaker 1: used to mean the same thing. And what and why,
32:25
Speaker 1: what's the deal with hydrophobia. It's a it's an intense,
32:28
Speaker 1: unreasonable fear of water that develops from raby symptoms. Apparently, Yeah,
32:33
Speaker 1: because I think drinking is uh, you have a very violent,
32:37
Speaker 1: painful spasms and responses to trying to swallow water, and
32:40
Speaker 1: so you become fearful of water. That's crazy, which is
32:44
Speaker 1: really really sad because you're drooling and you're producing tons
32:48
Speaker 1: of saliva, but you also are just dying of thirst basically.
32:52
Speaker 1: But if you do drink anything, the pain from your
32:56
Speaker 1: throat muscles contracting is so bad that you will just
33:00
Speaker 1: not drink. You would just rather not drink anything. And
33:04
Speaker 1: apparently you become fearful of even the concept of drinking,
33:07
Speaker 1: so you get scared of water. That's also because your
33:10
Speaker 1: brain is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Man. But yeah,
33:14
Speaker 1: this is not fun. This is not nice stuff. And
33:16
Speaker 1: and again. For years and years and years and years
33:19
Speaker 1: up until like the last few years, I think that
33:22
Speaker 1: the common conventional wisdom was if you if rabies got
33:27
Speaker 1: to your central nervous system, bye bye, we might as
33:30
Speaker 1: well old yellow you because you're not going to survive
33:34
Speaker 1: and you're going to die one of the worst deaths
33:37
Speaker 1: we could think of. And it wasn't until two thousand four. Yeah, Gina,
33:45
Speaker 1: Gina guys, I thought you could say, Gina Gershawn. No,
33:48
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, that's what happened to her gina. Guys,
33:50
Speaker 1: she was a girl, a teenager in Wisconsin who was
33:54
Speaker 1: bitten by a bat, I think, and some doctors said, um,
34:00
Speaker 1: you're a goner, but I'm not going to give up
34:02
Speaker 1: on egina, No way, no how. Uh sleep now, baby,
34:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put you in a coma. And he put
34:11
Speaker 1: her a medically induced coma and it was enough so
34:15
Speaker 1: that her body was able to fight off the Raby's infection.
34:21
Speaker 1: So she survived the Raby's infection without being inoculated previously,
34:26
Speaker 1: and um, apparently without the inoculation being given to her
34:29
Speaker 1: in a rapid enough time. So she literally survived a
34:32
Speaker 1: Raby's infection. And now they call that procedure of the
34:35
Speaker 1: Milwaukee protocol and it's saved five more people's lives. They
34:40
Speaker 1: call it that. Yeah, And there was a study in
34:43
Speaker 1: Peru and Uh in the Andies, a lot of Peruvian
34:47
Speaker 1: groups live near baths, they have to deal with bats.
34:51
Speaker 1: Apparently some Peruvians have developed immunity to rabies and they
34:57
Speaker 1: documented I think about a dozen Peruvian who survived rabies
35:01
Speaker 1: without any inoculation. So they're saying, Okay, this isn't a
35:05
Speaker 1: fatal disease. We can work with that. But it's like
35:08
Speaker 1: really big Gangbusters news is it's almost like a natural
35:11
Speaker 1: inoculation that's happening though the same idea right there, getting
35:14
Speaker 1: exposed to it gradually. I don't know. I don't know
35:17
Speaker 1: if that was these people have been been before, or
35:20
Speaker 1: if some sort of inoculation was passed down to them
35:23
Speaker 1: through heredity, you know, Like I don't know, I'm not sure.
35:26
Speaker 1: Like Grand Pappy was strong against the rabies, right, so
35:30
Speaker 1: I am right, that's how the jeans work, all right.
35:33
Speaker 1: From nineteen fifties to the roughly mid nineteen eighties. Uh,
35:38
Speaker 1: the horror stories were true. You did get like upwards
35:42
Speaker 1: of twenty to twenty three shots in the belly and
35:45
Speaker 1: the abdomen to treat rabies big needles. Right, Yeah, that
35:49
Speaker 1: was not an old wives tale. It was a very
35:51
Speaker 1: painful procedure. Um. I tried to find out why it
35:55
Speaker 1: was done in the belly, and the only thing I
35:57
Speaker 1: could find is completely unsubstantiated, but makes sense. Apparently, after
36:03
Speaker 1: you start having these shots, um, somewhere between ten and twenty,
36:08
Speaker 1: you start having really bad reactions and inflammation, and but
36:12
Speaker 1: you need to give them in the same area. So
36:14
Speaker 1: the belly was the largest part of the body that
36:17
Speaker 1: you could still find a place to give the injection.
36:20
Speaker 1: So I don't know if this true or not. That
36:21
Speaker 1: makes sense. Uh, And we have to mention Ozzy Osborne.
36:27
Speaker 1: But biting the head off a bat, Yeah, it wasn't
36:29
Speaker 1: a live bat. You know. Well, there's different stories up
36:33
Speaker 1: and down. It wasn't allow no, no no, no. He swears
36:35
Speaker 1: it was alive because he felt the head moving in
36:38
Speaker 1: his mouth. Oh, other people have said that it wasn't
36:41
Speaker 1: a lot. The fan that threw the bat on stage
36:44
Speaker 1: said it was dead. Azzis Ozzie right? He was like,
36:48
Speaker 1: it was a lot. Uh, thank you, but that is
36:53
Speaker 1: not an old white. He also bit the head off
36:55
Speaker 1: the pigeon at a party, but um, he thought the
36:57
Speaker 1: bat was a toy. Apparently did bite the bat and
37:00
Speaker 1: did get those injections as a preventative measure, but he
37:03
Speaker 1: did not ever contract rabies. Smart um. And this you
37:08
Speaker 1: know who knows. It's also called a legend in some circles.
37:11
Speaker 1: So but I think it really happened. It's documented. While
37:14
Speaker 1: I was researching this, I was like, wow, I am
37:17
Speaker 1: not inoculated against rabies. Maybe I should just go ahead
37:20
Speaker 1: and do that would be kind of neat to be like,
37:23
Speaker 1: go ahead and bite me, raccoon. You're crazy, raccoon. I'm fine,
37:27
Speaker 1: And then you could continue your ongoing battle with your squirrels,
37:29
Speaker 1: your sports deck squirrels. Now, the squirrels one I had
37:33
Speaker 1: to take down the bird feeder you just gave up.
37:36
Speaker 1: Now the kind of complex was like, you're not allowed
37:38
Speaker 1: to have those. They attract squirrels. I'm like, yeah, no
37:40
Speaker 1: doubt they squirrels. I know. So I said, it's fine.
37:47
Speaker 1: Do you got anything else? Nope, rabies. If you want
37:49
Speaker 1: to know more about it, type that word into the
37:51
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com are a B
37:54
Speaker 1: y s And it will bring up this awesome article.
38:00
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I'm just teething. It correctly spelled
38:04
Speaker 1: that way R A B I E S. That's right,
38:07
Speaker 1: all right? Uh did you say that? Oh? And since
38:10
Speaker 1: I misspelled something, it's time for a listener mail. I'm
38:15
Speaker 1: gonna call this um cringe worthy experience. Oh God, why
38:20
Speaker 1: did we ask him? Hey, guys, have been listening for
38:22
Speaker 1: a couple of years, writing for the first time to
38:24
Speaker 1: tell you a compelling story about the time my dad's
38:27
Speaker 1: eyeball fell out of his head. Perhaps I should say
38:30
Speaker 1: it was forced out of his head. It takes place
38:32
Speaker 1: before I was born, but the way he tells it,
38:36
Speaker 1: it will make you hesitant to go water skiing. See,
38:38
Speaker 1: my dad was a mob and force serve in Las Vegas.
38:43
Speaker 1: In particular, you wouldn't want to let your your body
38:45
Speaker 1: or your face become parallel to the water surface when
38:47
Speaker 1: you're going around a bend in the river. So when
38:50
Speaker 1: that happens, you could experience what happened to my dad.
38:52
Speaker 1: His face skimmed to the water and the force of
38:55
Speaker 1: that caused his eyeball to pop right out of his head.
38:58
Speaker 1: It's stuff that and legends are made of. So there
39:02
Speaker 1: my dad is and can excruciating pain treading water with
39:05
Speaker 1: his eyeball in the palm of his hand. If you're
39:07
Speaker 1: ever so lucky as to have your eyeball outside of
39:09
Speaker 1: your head, hope that it's still attached, like my dad's
39:12
Speaker 1: eyeball was. Cum as he got river water in his
39:15
Speaker 1: eye socket. God, he forced it back into his eye
39:20
Speaker 1: socket and there was nothing else he could do at
39:22
Speaker 1: that crucial moment. As I understand that he never went
39:25
Speaker 1: to see a doctor, and as I has been turned
39:29
Speaker 1: at a fruity five degree angle and his name is
39:31
Speaker 1: John Rambo is crazy. She said. He was relieved six
39:36
Speaker 1: months later while the white static he was seeing slowly
39:39
Speaker 1: started to return and he had normal vision once again.
39:44
Speaker 1: That's outcome bias. If I've ever seen it, cringe, if
39:47
Speaker 1: you experienced any squeamish feelings, I consider it his story
39:50
Speaker 1: well told. Yeah, well well told story that that is
39:54
Speaker 1: from Lena or Lina in California for California boy, I
39:59
Speaker 1: don't know. Her dad has made us some tough stuff.
40:02
Speaker 1: If he did not go to a doctor, he's like hero,
40:05
Speaker 1: not our simo. Hia. Yeah, it's crazy. So uh did
40:12
Speaker 1: somebody else wrote in and got me um about having
40:15
Speaker 1: to get shots like up their nose? That one got
40:19
Speaker 1: me too, So whoever wrote in with that one hats
40:22
Speaker 1: off well. At least this guy or got a great
40:24
Speaker 1: nickname out of old river water socket Jimmy the Mouthful. Uh.
40:31
Speaker 1: If you have a crunch risy story, keep it to yourself,
40:35
Speaker 1: send us something else in via tweet to s y
40:38
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40:42
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40:44
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40:47
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40:49
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40:54
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41:05
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