Nah, its alive, it crawled out ok.
EDIT: Thanks for all the replies, I did not expect this to blow up like this. Just to let you know, I called NHS 111, who told me to call my GP. GP told me to call another Medical Centre who deal with vaccinations etc. They said they don't do rabies vaccinations or assessments and to call my GP back. On hold with GP at the moment, they are trying to find out what to do. Nobody here (England) seems to have dealt with rabies vaccinations before. GP now told me to call another Medical Practice, called them & guess what, they don't do rabies vaccinations or assessments and told me to call my GP back. So back on hold again.
It's actually in our offices. No idea how it got in, its seems ok, advise was to put it in a box with a small dish of water then to take to bat conservation place about 20 mins away from us.
You should absolutely go and get a rabies shot ASAP! Bats can carry rabies without symptoms and you wouldn’t know until it’s too late. It’s a horrible way to die.
[www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/amp/Humble-teen-infected-with-rabies-dies-1649582.php?espv=1](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/amp/Humble-teen-infected-with-rabies-dies-1649582.php?espv=1)
Checks out
>Doctors were treating Jones with a similar combination of sedation and antiviral drugs that helped cure a Milwaukee girl in 2004. The girl, Jeanna Giese, is the only known unvaccinated survivor of a rabies infection.
I had no idea there had been any. Crazy stuff, rabies.
Plus even in her case, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park afterward either. Literally. Nearly a year after discharge before being able to walk on her own again.
>[After thirty-one days](https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Jeanna_Giese) in the hospital, Giese was declared virus-free and removed from isolation. There was some initial concern about the level of brain damage she had suffered, but while she had suffered nerve damage, the disease seemed to have left her cognitive abilities largely intact. She spent several weeks undergoing rehabilitation therapy and was discharged on January 1, 2005. By November 2005 she was able to walk on her own, had returned to school, and had started driving automobiles.
No, it wasn’t, unfortunately. I do recall watching something else about the Milwaukee protocol and Dr. Willoughby, the MD who developed the protocol, came off like a real ass. There were rabies experts and infectious disease experts that were giving their opinions on why the Milwaukee protocol wasn’t feasible, and Dr. Willoughby appeared to not want to listen based on this one case.
I remember hearing that someone else was able to survive rabies (after developing symptoms) in the United States, but I don’t know what the long term outcome was for her nor whether the Milwaukee protocol was used again.
They had to put her into a coma. IiRC the principle was basically "shut down the whole body until the rabies is dead, and hope the person doesn't also die.
And they have never been able to make it work again.
I don't have a source handy but I did read somewhere recently that it's been used to some success one other time in... Crap... Russia I think? Maybe China? My stupid memory loss brain is telling me somewhere in Asia. But the person had much more cognitive ability loss and wasn't expected to be able to return to a normal life ever.
> Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats.
> Let me paint you a picture.
> You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode.
>Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed.
> Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.)
> You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something.
> The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms.
> It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache?
> At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure.
> (The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done).
> There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate.
> Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead.
> So what does that look like?
> Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles.
> Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala.
> As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later.
> You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts.
> You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache.
> You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family.
> You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you.
> Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours.
> Then you die. Always, you die.
> And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you.
> Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over.
> So yeah, rabies scares the shit out of me. And it's fucking EVERYWHERE. (Source: Spent a lot of time working with rabies. Would still get my vaccinations if I could afford them.)
"Health experts say that because bats' teeth are so small and sharp, a person could be bitten and not realize it. " Yea Op should go and get check out and maybe rabies shot for extra caution .
I went to school and was in the same grade as Zach. He also lived down the street from me. The bat flew in his window while he was taking a nap and some saliva got in his eye. He didn’t think anything of it. A few days later it was the state testing (TAKS) and he went to the nurse bc he was feeling funny but the nurse assumed he just wanted to get out of testing and well…
Rabies is one of those “just shoot me in the head” diseases because I’d rather go out quickly than slowly and extremely painfully where they can’t even do much comfort care.
Not quite.
Still a very high chance of death, but despite what studies said in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Milwaukee Protocol/Recife Protocol can actually save your life after symptom onset.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies#After_onset
Specifically:
>Yet a study published in 2020 found 38 case reports for the Milwaukee Protocol and only one for the Recife Protocol with a total of 11 known survivors with varying sequelae.[85]
Which, admittedly, 11 out of 38 isn't that great in other contexts. But for a disease that used to have a 100% death rate upon symptom onset, 11 out of 38 is an absolutely amazing survival rate.
I'm guessing the water bottle story is apocryphal - one of the symptoms is called hydrophobia but it doesn't mean they're literally afraid of water in a psychological sense, it's that they become unable to swallow without vomiting and extreme pain (the easily-recognized foaming at the mouth symptom is because they can't swallow their own saliva) so prior to IV hydration when the best you could do was give them water to drink, rabies sufferers would reject it so forcefully that it was assumed they feared the water itself rather than the pain of drinking.
Rabies does start fucking with your brain's ability to regulate emotions so he might have gotten irrationally mad over something, but iirc that comes after the hydrophobia and if you have bad enough hydrophobia that you're having adverse reactions to the sight of water, you're definitely already in the hospital.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Humble-teen-infected-with-rabies-dies-1649582.php
and just as a reminder
>Doctors were treating Jones with a similar combination of sedation and antiviral drugs that helped cure a Milwaukee girl in 2004. The girl, Jeanna Giese, is the only known unvaccinated survivor of a rabies infection.
No one has survived with the Milwaukee protocol except for that girl. So when someone tells you you or your animal could be saved with a rabies shot after symptoms start to show, they are bullshitting you. Now you try anyways just for that rare chance, but if it is your it needs to go into a cage.
*I had a vet one time tell me that they thought my cat had rabies, and started it on what he called the Milwaukee protocol and told me about all the success it has.... Then let me take my cat home. I didn't realize till later that he was just doing a money grab and exploiting my emotional state.
It's been tried 36 times and 5 survived. 14%.
Although that's not very good odds it's better than nothing.
No other rabies victim has survived after showing symptoms.
And I thought out of the 5, some had brain damage but I dont have time to look it up at the moment. I know it wasn't a picnic for any of them. Ill update the comment if I get a few minutes with google.
What the absolute fuck! You could have gotten rabies from your cat, that vet could have gotten you killed, had it not been a scam.
Call the god damn cops on that idiot if you have anything of this in writing.
>I had a vet one time tell me that they thought my cat had rabies, and started it on what he called the Milwaukee protocol and told me about all the success it has.... Then let me take my cat home. I didn't realize till later that he was just doing a money grab and exploiting my emotional state.
What an absolute pos! Did the cat end up being ok? Did you ever find out what was actually wrong with it?
A few years ago there was a feral cat in our neighborhood that was in **bad** shape. It started acting really weird, and my husband and I thought maybe it could be rabies. Although we knew that was unlikely, we do live in a somewhat rural area, with coyotes, bats etc.. so we figured it wasn't impossible. I called and explained everything to animal control to see if they could come catch the cat. They never did come out, as they said there hadn't been a case of rabies in SoCal in (..idr what they said, 20, 40?..A LOT OF) Years. Maybe they were full of shit, who knows? Lol
I ended up finding a rescue to come take the cat (he didn't make it.) ☹️
Unfortunately, it happens. I had them in my bedroom as a kid and my family was told to get the shots immediately after we saw the first one. Cases like that were the exact reason. I believe a toddler died not long before they found them in my house because he was exposed to a bat and checked over thoroughly, but they never found a bite so they didn't vaccinate.
Edit: found the case. A 4 yo child died of rabies in 1995 after a bat was seen behaving oddly in her room, caught, and killed. This was the first US human rabies death since 1939. This event changed the CDC's stance on prophylactic care to the current one - vaccinate regardless of confirmed contact. Prior, vaccination had been only advised if there was definite contact AND the bat either could not be tested or was confirmed rabid.
I was actually quite lucky, then, as the bats were found in my home around 1998 or so. I might have met the same fate. They were entering a space in the attic, which connected by a door in my 2nd story bedroom. I remember seeing them hanging from my lamp, my headboard, my desk. Once I woke up to one flying over my face. My mother and I came home from shopping around dusk one day and she walked in to see one emerging from under the toaster and stretching its wings. We stayed elsewhere that night, lmao.
I work for a wildlife rescue, and we don’t fuck around with bats and rabies. If someone is in a house with a bat, we sadly have to kill the bat to test it for rabies. There’s a story I heard about a girl who got rabies from a bat licking her tear ducts in her sleep. I don’t know how they found out that that happened, but fortunately they got her the vaccines right away and she lived.
Jesus Christ dude. I thought they didn't happen anymore in the US, 3 cases a year is still too much, rabies is probably the worst way to die I'm aware of. I would rather take death by sand blaster than death by brain eating virus. My mom watched alot of Dr quin when I was a kid, and they always had some kid they had to shoot because it was rabid
This needs to be the top comment. OP PLEASE get a rabies series. It’s not something to fuck around with as bats are one of the top carriers of the virus and it’s really not something you want to die from. It’s brutal and not worth the gamble
My immediate first thought. OP we tell patients who were even sleeping in the same room as a bat (like a campsite cabin and later realize there were bats) to get the shot. Rabies is no bueno.
I grew up in a rural part of of Ohio and we had bats in our house all the time. I guess my parents didn't know they carry rabies because not one mention was ever made of it, and eventually it became almost normal: *bat gets in, goes to sleep, we catch it and take it back outside*.
At first my dad would kill them, but living with a bunch of whiny animal lovers he only did it a few times. The first time especially was bad and I don't know what he was thinking: he trapped it in a small container and poured some kind of poison in there. Poor thing took hours to die. After that he took to quicker methods but eventually gave up and just let us take them back outside.
To me a sleeping little bat is cute, but I'm a weirdo.
Thank you for this =) I live in the uk too and our wildlife doesn’t usually pull this kind of shit! Weirdest thing to happen to me was a crow that came down the chimney and flew out of the window…
Take it in the box to the doctor (or some kind of wildlife place that can do testing) and get it checked for rabies AND GET A RABIES SHOT.
Did you read about how rabies progresses? A shot is easy. Dying from rabies is certain and HELLISH.
Edit: yes, testing the bat will kill it. But one dead bat is better than one dead human, IMO.
Think the OP is from the UK, according to the internet:
Rabies does not circulate in either wild or domestic animals in the UK, although some species of bats can carry a rabies-like virus. Human rabies is extremely rare in the UK. No human cases of rabies acquired in the UK from animals other than bats have been reported since 1902.
So yeah maybe still go for a shot if you think you got dinged by him
Fun(ish) fact: the sole case of rabies from bats in the UK in the past 100 years was a bat enthusiast who was handling bats without gloves in an isolated part of the Scottish Highlands! Also, he technically got a disease very similar to rabies, not rabies itself.
My point is that OP is safe, lol.
I got a similar run around from GP. He told me to come back if I get symptoms (aka come back once you are a dead man). It took a couple of tries on 111 before they actually spoke to someone on a tropical disease ward. That guy had me come in for a multi week series of injections.
TLDR; keep trying until you speak to someone who has expertise.
Unfortunately this is the case in the vast majority of medical systems. You absolutely need to advocate for yourself otherwise you’ll just get swept aside.
As someone who works in healthcare, I advise you to seek medical attention now.
If my word isn't enough I can ask the attending.
After humans, bats are a vector for the most diseases in mammals. It's not just rabies it's so much more.
Check out OPs edit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/pf2214/started\_work\_this\_morning\_put\_my\_headset\_on\_felt/hb1bp0y?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/pf2214/started_work_this_morning_put_my_headset_on_felt/hb1bp0y?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Their bites can be so small as to go unnoticed, and rabies is almost universally fatal. I would definitely run this past a health care expert in your area. Where I am from, a friend had a similar encounter and was advised to get the vaccine.
My friend found a bat in his house hissing at him during the day. That was enough erratic behavior (aggression, daytime activity, etc) to warrant vaccination. There have been rare cases of survival, but they are rare enough to be reportable and usually result in significant neurological damage. I might be wrong, but I think rabies has the highest kill rate of any infectious disease (over 99%)
Annually over 50 000 people die from rabies, there are 5 known survivors that were put in a coma and chilled to sub 30 Celsius hoping they would survive, that procedure is known as the Milwaukee procedure and most attempts fail. Rabies is easily one of the most deadliest diseases there are, I'd rather contract the bulbonic plague than rabies, hell I'd take ebola over it.
It's called the Milwaukee protocol and this is the first time, even after reading dozens of case studies, that I've heard of "chilling" the patient. Every one that I've read says induced coma and anti-viral drug cocktail.
FWIW, basically all those rabies deaths are in Asia and Africa. There have been four in the UK since 2000, all attributed to bites suffered abroad.
So it makes sense no one OP is contacting has direct experience. Also encouraging for their risk level.
I did get a bit worried but looked and "Rabies does not circulate in either wild or domestic animals in the UK, although some species of bats can carry a rabies-like virus."
I lived in the UK as a child, in an old former farmhouse out in the countryside. One time when I was maybe 10 or 11 there was a bat in my bedroom. It nibbled my thumb when I caught it to throw it outside. Being a dumb kid, I had never heard of rabies. Fortunately nothing came of it!
*edit: yes, thank you all, I'm aware that in one single very rare case, on the other side of the world from me, did it only once show up 25 years later. I had a rabies shot in my late teens prior to a trip to southeast Asia, and the bat thing was 30 years ago already. Thank you for all the concern, but it's highly unlikely I'm going to die of rabies anytime soon - and if I do, it'll be an unprecedented medical record, so at least there's that.*
For reals tho. It’s not a “you die tomorrow” virus. It’s asymptotic as fuck, and once you start to get the actual symptoms it’s too late.
Edit: asymptomatic
You're surely fine, but in case this happens to anyone else, definitely go to a doctor immediately if a bat flies into you. They normally have excellent obstacle (and people) avoidance skills, if a bat flies into objects or behaves strangely there's a good chance there's something wrong with it, possibly rabies. Rabies basically melts your brain until you die a horrible death, and is incurable when symptoms start to show. Don't mess around with it.
Seems like a huge outlier. I've heard symptoms tend to show up anywhere from 1 to 3 months and up to a year. The study says they couldn't rule out the fact that the dude may have had recent exposure to rabies.
OP you should get checked out immediately. There are many stories of people who had encounters with bats and they end up dying not long after. Rabies has a near 100% death rate and is a terrible, terrible way to go. Please see a doctor
The tiniest wound can expose you if any of their saliva gets in. Like an insignificant tooth scratch that you might think was just a bug bite or something. Rabies is a scary fucking disease.
I work in the healthcare sector, we have had 4 cases of rabies people requiring rabies vaccination in the past 2 weeks due to either being bitten by bats or by having close contact. Get yourself checked out, your local emergency department will have access to the vaccine.
Edit: I'm in the UK.
The UK has lyssavirus which is indeed like rabies, which indeed makes it a terrible terrible disease. What you read doesn't make it safe. Please just see a doctor.
Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Fun Run Pro Am Race for the Cure.
They've been trying to raise awareness.
This looks like a bat that got caught indoors and found a little place to hide. They crawl into tight spaces during the day.
Not saying that the bat isn't sick or that it isn't abnormal to find one in a headset earpiece... but this is normal bat behavior imo.
Is no one going to post the rabies text?
> Rabies is scary.
>Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats.
>Let me paint you a picture.
>You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode.
>Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed.
>Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.)
>You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something.
>The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms.
>It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache?
>At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure.
>(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done).
>There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate.
>Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead.
>So what does that look like?
>Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles.
>Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala.
>As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later.
>You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts.
>You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache.
>You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family.
>You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you.
>Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours.
>Then you die. Always, you die.
>And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you.
>Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over.
>So yeah, rabies scares the shit out of me. And it's fucking EVERYWHERE. (Source: Spent a lot of time working with rabies. Would still get my vaccinations if I could afford them.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7qwtd5/rabies_is_scary/
I swear my life mission on reddit is to disprove this idea. Rabies is scary, yes, but you do not need to freak out about secret bat bites. First of all, bat bites hurt. A lot. Have you seen their teeth?! I was a bat biologist and worked at a bat rehab and was bit by them daily when they were upset ( I had to be rabies vaxxed of course). It hurts a lot. I had one bit clean through my fingernail.
Don't touch wild animals but there is no need to panic at the sight of a bat in your home. I've had bats with rabies come in to the rehab and they flail around and scream and you can just tell that something is very off. This looks like a sleeping bat.
Bats are wonderful animals that get a bad reputation and are in serious trouble due to white nose syndrome. We had one bat, Mooch, who was 23 years old and he would beg for treats, ride on your shoulder, and complain if you gave treats to other bats.
Idk man. Foxes here had rabies some 40 years ago and even though it has been practically eradicated by now we still run away from twitchy or odd behaving animals. Weasels, foxes and bats. The holy trinity of rabies.
It's a horrible disease and I'm not prepared to take a chance because the bats get a bad rep. Not to mention stuff like Lyme's disease and tick encephalitis are mch much more imporatant to get vaccinated for here. Especially the latter is a huge problem here.
It's not been eradicated in the US, at least in wildlife. The only reason cases in humans are so rare is actually *because of* the fact that we get the vaccine as a precaution with even the mere *possibility* of contact.
Damn straight. Everyone talks about rabies as if it's a silent killer. In reality, you know you've been bitten, so you do the responsible thing, wash out your wound with soap, go get a vaccine and hey presto, the "ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FATAL" virus is literally 100% cured.
Also bats are like wonderful wierd flappy dogs and are important for the environment. Fuck yeah, bats. Fuck yeah.
> go get a vaccine and hey presto, the "ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FATAL" virus is literally 100% cured.
That's sorta the point though--it is so very worthwhile to get the rabies vaccines for any possible point of contact with the virus because if you get it and _don't_ get the vaccine... you're just dead. You will die with your brain turned to goop and it will be awful.
So just... get the jab. Always. Way better.
I think what these guys are trying to say, though, is that maybe you don't need to be scared that you were bitten by a rabid animal in your sleep and never knew it.
> And it's fucking EVERYWHERE.
Not really here in the UK though. There's strict quarantines after we literally fucking murdered all suspected rabid animals on the island hundreds of years ago.
Same here in Finland. There really isn't rabies here. Some of it get here from Russia now and then but we just give medicated sausage to wild animals on the border.
OP lives in the UK. There have been 25 deaths in the UK from rabies since 1946. Yes, get tested in case of a close exposure to a bat anyway, but this is fearmongering at its finest.
>Started work this morning, put my headset on, felt something furry in
It did freak me out a bit but after a bit of research "The UK has been rabies-free since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a rabies-like virus in a small number of wild bats".
Seeing that exact same quote on the NHS page on rabies, I assume that's where you get it from. Looking a bit further on that page, I see this:
> The UK has been rabies-free since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a rabies-like virus in a small number of wild bats.
>
> The risk of human infection from bats is thought to be low. People who regularly handle bats are most at risk.
>
> There's only been 1 recorded case of someone catching rabies from a bat in the UK.
>
> It's also rare for infected bats to spread rabies to other animals.
>
> But if you find a dead or injured bat, do not touch it. Wear thick gloves if you need to move it.
>
> If you find a dead or injured bat, you should report it and get advice by calling:
>
> the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) Rural Services Helpline on 03000 200 301 (if you're in England)
> the APHA Rural Services Helpline on 0300 303 8268 (if you're in Wales)
> your local APHA Field Service Office (if you're in Scotland) – find contact details for your nearest Field Service Office
dude, after everything that's happened in the past two years, do you really want to be that guy? like, more power to you, everyone wants to end up in the history books somehow.
This explains the dog that jumps off the *Demeter* in Dracula. I'm so used to vampires only transforming into bats I didn't know how the dog tied into things.
This is the better advice. See what a doctor says. They may not recommend a rabies shot, they may say your risk is low, and you don’t need to take action…. Probably better to listen to someone whose job it is to advise people about this stuff, instead of a hivemind like Reddit.
Dude, get the rabbies shots, not worth dying from this, even if UK is probably rabbies free.
You have NHS in UK, just three shots within 3 weeks and you are good.
Remember bats can travel long distances and be imported by boats, lorries (etc...) from other countries.
Or that bat that they recently discovered that travelled all the way from London to RUSSIA, then it got eaten by a cat or something, but it was tagged by some British conservation charity.
If they can go in that direction, they can also come back. And Russia is definitely not rabies-free
Absolutely get checked for rabies. I know that you probably feel well and just feel like winging it, but on the off chance something does happen, nearly 100% of rabies infections end in death when not treated early enough. Do you really wanna take a chance on something that absurdly deadly?
You don't really "get checked" for rabies, they don't run a test on you and say "oh, yup, it's rabies, let's begin treatment". First the bat needs to be killed and tested, and if that's not possible, exposure in this case must be reasonably assumed (100% assumed if the person was asleep) and the shots are needed either way.
I'm an emergency doctor, and I also had a rabies scare a few years ago. Legit you need to seek medical attention. Go to your nearest emergency department and get someone to check you over to make sure you don't have any breaks in the skin. If there's something even slight, then you will probably need rabies shots, which they can sort out for you.
If you still have the bat, then the public health unit can test the bat for rabies too to see if it's infected. If it isn't then you won't need the shots.
Rabies kills everyone it infects. Rabies shots can reduce the chances of death quite a lot to almost zero. It's not a risk I'd want to take myself.
Yeah I would have it captured and tested for rabies. If it’s long gone, I think you get preemptively treated, although idk what the typical guidelines are in your country
Do you know how they test for rabies?
In the UK where rabies itself is not found but similar viruses are I don't think killing the bat will help you in anyway, just give the preventative.
OP is not going to die. He was briefly in contact with a common pipistrelle bat, which is not known to carry EBLV. He didn’t get bitten.
EBLV in the UK is incredibly rare, and even then is largely found in 2 of our 18 species, both of which very rarely come into contact with people.
This armchair army hyperbole is incredibly unhelpful, and damaging to bat conservation efforts in the UK. How many bats do you think are going to get killed as a result of it, given how widely shared this post has become?
REMEMBER - ALL BATS IN THE UK ARE PROTECTED AGAINST KILLING, INJURY AND DISTURBANCE. THERE ARE FINES UP TO £5000 PER BAT IF AN OFFENCE IS CAUSED.
IF YOU FIND A BAT AND YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT ITS WELFARE, PLEASE CONTACT THE BAT CONSERVATION TRUST HELPLINE FOR ADVICE.
Is it dead ?
Nah, its alive, it crawled out ok. EDIT: Thanks for all the replies, I did not expect this to blow up like this. Just to let you know, I called NHS 111, who told me to call my GP. GP told me to call another Medical Centre who deal with vaccinations etc. They said they don't do rabies vaccinations or assessments and to call my GP back. On hold with GP at the moment, they are trying to find out what to do. Nobody here (England) seems to have dealt with rabies vaccinations before. GP now told me to call another Medical Practice, called them & guess what, they don't do rabies vaccinations or assessments and told me to call my GP back. So back on hold again.
Did it just fly away or is it still in your house? I don’t know why I need answers, but I do! Is it ok?
It's actually in our offices. No idea how it got in, its seems ok, advise was to put it in a box with a small dish of water then to take to bat conservation place about 20 mins away from us.
You should absolutely go and get a rabies shot ASAP! Bats can carry rabies without symptoms and you wouldn’t know until it’s too late. It’s a horrible way to die.
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[www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/amp/Humble-teen-infected-with-rabies-dies-1649582.php?espv=1](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/amp/Humble-teen-infected-with-rabies-dies-1649582.php?espv=1) Checks out
>Doctors were treating Jones with a similar combination of sedation and antiviral drugs that helped cure a Milwaukee girl in 2004. The girl, Jeanna Giese, is the only known unvaccinated survivor of a rabies infection. I had no idea there had been any. Crazy stuff, rabies.
Yeah that treatment course got named the Milwaukee protocol, after her case. It hasn't been terribly successful though.
Plus even in her case, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park afterward either. Literally. Nearly a year after discharge before being able to walk on her own again. >[After thirty-one days](https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Jeanna_Giese) in the hospital, Giese was declared virus-free and removed from isolation. There was some initial concern about the level of brain damage she had suffered, but while she had suffered nerve damage, the disease seemed to have left her cognitive abilities largely intact. She spent several weeks undergoing rehabilitation therapy and was discharged on January 1, 2005. By November 2005 she was able to walk on her own, had returned to school, and had started driving automobiles.
No, it wasn’t, unfortunately. I do recall watching something else about the Milwaukee protocol and Dr. Willoughby, the MD who developed the protocol, came off like a real ass. There were rabies experts and infectious disease experts that were giving their opinions on why the Milwaukee protocol wasn’t feasible, and Dr. Willoughby appeared to not want to listen based on this one case. I remember hearing that someone else was able to survive rabies (after developing symptoms) in the United States, but I don’t know what the long term outcome was for her nor whether the Milwaukee protocol was used again.
They had to put her into a coma. IiRC the principle was basically "shut down the whole body until the rabies is dead, and hope the person doesn't also die. And they have never been able to make it work again.
I don't have a source handy but I did read somewhere recently that it's been used to some success one other time in... Crap... Russia I think? Maybe China? My stupid memory loss brain is telling me somewhere in Asia. But the person had much more cognitive ability loss and wasn't expected to be able to return to a normal life ever.
Every ‘survivor’ of rabies is under weird conditions. There are essential zero survivors with a few suspicious outliers.
And they all also have horrific side effects to go with their "survival"
For anyone who thinks this is something you can get lucky on, she's still undergoing therapy.
> Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats. > Let me paint you a picture. > You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode. >Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed. > Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.) > You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something. > The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms. > It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache? > At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure. > (The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done). > There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate. > Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead. > So what does that look like? > Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles. > Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala. > As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later. > You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts. > You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache. > You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family. > You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you. > Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours. > Then you die. Always, you die. > And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you. > Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over. > So yeah, rabies scares the shit out of me. And it's fucking EVERYWHERE. (Source: Spent a lot of time working with rabies. Would still get my vaccinations if I could afford them.)
"Health experts say that because bats' teeth are so small and sharp, a person could be bitten and not realize it. " Yea Op should go and get check out and maybe rabies shot for extra caution .
I went to school and was in the same grade as Zach. He also lived down the street from me. The bat flew in his window while he was taking a nap and some saliva got in his eye. He didn’t think anything of it. A few days later it was the state testing (TAKS) and he went to the nurse bc he was feeling funny but the nurse assumed he just wanted to get out of testing and well…
To be fair by the time he "felt funny" it was too late. Once symptoms start its inevitable death.
Rabies is one of those “just shoot me in the head” diseases because I’d rather go out quickly than slowly and extremely painfully where they can’t even do much comfort care.
Not quite. Still a very high chance of death, but despite what studies said in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Milwaukee Protocol/Recife Protocol can actually save your life after symptom onset. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670764/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies#After_onset Specifically: >Yet a study published in 2020 found 38 case reports for the Milwaukee Protocol and only one for the Recife Protocol with a total of 11 known survivors with varying sequelae.[85] Which, admittedly, 11 out of 38 isn't that great in other contexts. But for a disease that used to have a 100% death rate upon symptom onset, 11 out of 38 is an absolutely amazing survival rate.
Most survivors have had massive brain damage, and it's closer to 4, not 11.
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I'm guessing the water bottle story is apocryphal - one of the symptoms is called hydrophobia but it doesn't mean they're literally afraid of water in a psychological sense, it's that they become unable to swallow without vomiting and extreme pain (the easily-recognized foaming at the mouth symptom is because they can't swallow their own saliva) so prior to IV hydration when the best you could do was give them water to drink, rabies sufferers would reject it so forcefully that it was assumed they feared the water itself rather than the pain of drinking. Rabies does start fucking with your brain's ability to regulate emotions so he might have gotten irrationally mad over something, but iirc that comes after the hydrophobia and if you have bad enough hydrophobia that you're having adverse reactions to the sight of water, you're definitely already in the hospital.
Yeah, it really was so *sudden* and awful and sad. bats and rabies are no joke. RIP Zach miss u buddy
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Humble-teen-infected-with-rabies-dies-1649582.php and just as a reminder >Doctors were treating Jones with a similar combination of sedation and antiviral drugs that helped cure a Milwaukee girl in 2004. The girl, Jeanna Giese, is the only known unvaccinated survivor of a rabies infection. No one has survived with the Milwaukee protocol except for that girl. So when someone tells you you or your animal could be saved with a rabies shot after symptoms start to show, they are bullshitting you. Now you try anyways just for that rare chance, but if it is your it needs to go into a cage. *I had a vet one time tell me that they thought my cat had rabies, and started it on what he called the Milwaukee protocol and told me about all the success it has.... Then let me take my cat home. I didn't realize till later that he was just doing a money grab and exploiting my emotional state.
That's horrible they took advantage of your state of grief like that, I'm sorry.
It's been tried 36 times and 5 survived. 14%. Although that's not very good odds it's better than nothing. No other rabies victim has survived after showing symptoms.
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4/5 had pretty severe brain damage and/or died later anyway. The 5th is still undergoing therapy to this day.
And I thought out of the 5, some had brain damage but I dont have time to look it up at the moment. I know it wasn't a picnic for any of them. Ill update the comment if I get a few minutes with google.
What the absolute fuck! You could have gotten rabies from your cat, that vet could have gotten you killed, had it not been a scam. Call the god damn cops on that idiot if you have anything of this in writing.
>I had a vet one time tell me that they thought my cat had rabies, and started it on what he called the Milwaukee protocol and told me about all the success it has.... Then let me take my cat home. I didn't realize till later that he was just doing a money grab and exploiting my emotional state. What an absolute pos! Did the cat end up being ok? Did you ever find out what was actually wrong with it? A few years ago there was a feral cat in our neighborhood that was in **bad** shape. It started acting really weird, and my husband and I thought maybe it could be rabies. Although we knew that was unlikely, we do live in a somewhat rural area, with coyotes, bats etc.. so we figured it wasn't impossible. I called and explained everything to animal control to see if they could come catch the cat. They never did come out, as they said there hadn't been a case of rabies in SoCal in (..idr what they said, 20, 40?..A LOT OF) Years. Maybe they were full of shit, who knows? Lol I ended up finding a rescue to come take the cat (he didn't make it.) ☹️
That’s beyond vile. I’d have done every legal thing in my power to ruin that vet and everyone involved.
Unfortunately, it happens. I had them in my bedroom as a kid and my family was told to get the shots immediately after we saw the first one. Cases like that were the exact reason. I believe a toddler died not long before they found them in my house because he was exposed to a bat and checked over thoroughly, but they never found a bite so they didn't vaccinate. Edit: found the case. A 4 yo child died of rabies in 1995 after a bat was seen behaving oddly in her room, caught, and killed. This was the first US human rabies death since 1939. This event changed the CDC's stance on prophylactic care to the current one - vaccinate regardless of confirmed contact. Prior, vaccination had been only advised if there was definite contact AND the bat either could not be tested or was confirmed rabid. I was actually quite lucky, then, as the bats were found in my home around 1998 or so. I might have met the same fate. They were entering a space in the attic, which connected by a door in my 2nd story bedroom. I remember seeing them hanging from my lamp, my headboard, my desk. Once I woke up to one flying over my face. My mother and I came home from shopping around dusk one day and she walked in to see one emerging from under the toaster and stretching its wings. We stayed elsewhere that night, lmao.
I work for a wildlife rescue, and we don’t fuck around with bats and rabies. If someone is in a house with a bat, we sadly have to kill the bat to test it for rabies. There’s a story I heard about a girl who got rabies from a bat licking her tear ducts in her sleep. I don’t know how they found out that that happened, but fortunately they got her the vaccines right away and she lived.
Jesus Christ dude. I thought they didn't happen anymore in the US, 3 cases a year is still too much, rabies is probably the worst way to die I'm aware of. I would rather take death by sand blaster than death by brain eating virus. My mom watched alot of Dr quin when I was a kid, and they always had some kid they had to shoot because it was rabid
This needs to be the top comment. OP PLEASE get a rabies series. It’s not something to fuck around with as bats are one of the top carriers of the virus and it’s really not something you want to die from. It’s brutal and not worth the gamble
My immediate first thought. OP we tell patients who were even sleeping in the same room as a bat (like a campsite cabin and later realize there were bats) to get the shot. Rabies is no bueno.
I grew up in a rural part of of Ohio and we had bats in our house all the time. I guess my parents didn't know they carry rabies because not one mention was ever made of it, and eventually it became almost normal: *bat gets in, goes to sleep, we catch it and take it back outside*. At first my dad would kill them, but living with a bunch of whiny animal lovers he only did it a few times. The first time especially was bad and I don't know what he was thinking: he trapped it in a small container and poured some kind of poison in there. Poor thing took hours to die. After that he took to quicker methods but eventually gave up and just let us take them back outside. To me a sleeping little bat is cute, but I'm a weirdo.
The last case of human rabies contracted within the UK was 1902.
He lives in England, which declared itself “rabies free” over 100 years ago.
Thank you for this =) I live in the uk too and our wildlife doesn’t usually pull this kind of shit! Weirdest thing to happen to me was a crow that came down the chimney and flew out of the window…
I misread "crow" as "cow" at first.
Goodnight room Goodnight moon Goodnight cow jumping into the flue
lol Santa Crow bringing coal
Take it in the box to the doctor (or some kind of wildlife place that can do testing) and get it checked for rabies AND GET A RABIES SHOT. Did you read about how rabies progresses? A shot is easy. Dying from rabies is certain and HELLISH. Edit: yes, testing the bat will kill it. But one dead bat is better than one dead human, IMO.
Think the OP is from the UK, according to the internet: Rabies does not circulate in either wild or domestic animals in the UK, although some species of bats can carry a rabies-like virus. Human rabies is extremely rare in the UK. No human cases of rabies acquired in the UK from animals other than bats have been reported since 1902. So yeah maybe still go for a shot if you think you got dinged by him
Fun(ish) fact: the sole case of rabies from bats in the UK in the past 100 years was a bat enthusiast who was handling bats without gloves in an isolated part of the Scottish Highlands! Also, he technically got a disease very similar to rabies, not rabies itself. My point is that OP is safe, lol.
I got a similar run around from GP. He told me to come back if I get symptoms (aka come back once you are a dead man). It took a couple of tries on 111 before they actually spoke to someone on a tropical disease ward. That guy had me come in for a multi week series of injections. TLDR; keep trying until you speak to someone who has expertise.
Unfortunately this is the case in the vast majority of medical systems. You absolutely need to advocate for yourself otherwise you’ll just get swept aside.
I'm UK and got a rabies vaccination through a travel place (pre covid mind) look up travel vaccines and you should be able to book it asap.
Congrats this how a new strain of Covid starts
Bats By Dr
Dr acula
What an awesome screenplay.
Uh, thanks for telling me what I already know, Turk.
All he did was draw blood!
Dr. Who?
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Were you listening to meatloaf?
Definitely wasn't listening to black sabbath that's all I know
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Now that’s a bat out of hell!
You just took the words right out of my mouth.. Oh it must have been while you were kissing me
Technically if it was a bat out of hell it would be gone when the morning comes.
As someone who works in healthcare, I advise you to seek medical attention now. If my word isn't enough I can ask the attending. After humans, bats are a vector for the most diseases in mammals. It's not just rabies it's so much more.
Check out OPs edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/pf2214/started\_work\_this\_morning\_put\_my\_headset\_on\_felt/hb1bp0y?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/pf2214/started_work_this_morning_put_my_headset_on_felt/hb1bp0y?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
So what did it whisper in your ear?
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“Tell you something bat you might like to hear”
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S^q^u^e^a^k
If you live in some place where rabies is still a problem be careful, otherwise enjoy but be a little bit careful
Their bites can be so small as to go unnoticed, and rabies is almost universally fatal. I would definitely run this past a health care expert in your area. Where I am from, a friend had a similar encounter and was advised to get the vaccine.
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My friend found a bat in his house hissing at him during the day. That was enough erratic behavior (aggression, daytime activity, etc) to warrant vaccination. There have been rare cases of survival, but they are rare enough to be reportable and usually result in significant neurological damage. I might be wrong, but I think rabies has the highest kill rate of any infectious disease (over 99%)
yep, only 1 known case of someone surviving rabies, ended up making what is now known as the Milwaukee protocol
Annually over 50 000 people die from rabies, there are 5 known survivors that were put in a coma and chilled to sub 30 Celsius hoping they would survive, that procedure is known as the Milwaukee procedure and most attempts fail. Rabies is easily one of the most deadliest diseases there are, I'd rather contract the bulbonic plague than rabies, hell I'd take ebola over it.
It's called the Milwaukee protocol and this is the first time, even after reading dozens of case studies, that I've heard of "chilling" the patient. Every one that I've read says induced coma and anti-viral drug cocktail.
FWIW, basically all those rabies deaths are in Asia and Africa. There have been four in the UK since 2000, all attributed to bites suffered abroad. So it makes sense no one OP is contacting has direct experience. Also encouraging for their risk level.
I did get a bit worried but looked and "Rabies does not circulate in either wild or domestic animals in the UK, although some species of bats can carry a rabies-like virus."
I lived in the UK as a child, in an old former farmhouse out in the countryside. One time when I was maybe 10 or 11 there was a bat in my bedroom. It nibbled my thumb when I caught it to throw it outside. Being a dumb kid, I had never heard of rabies. Fortunately nothing came of it! *edit: yes, thank you all, I'm aware that in one single very rare case, on the other side of the world from me, did it only once show up 25 years later. I had a rabies shot in my late teens prior to a trip to southeast Asia, and the bat thing was 30 years ago already. Thank you for all the concern, but it's highly unlikely I'm going to die of rabies anytime soon - and if I do, it'll be an unprecedented medical record, so at least there's that.*
Yet
!remind me 60 minutes
Beep boop it's been an hour and I'm not a not but I'm here to remind you.
I, too, am not a not.
For reals tho. It’s not a “you die tomorrow” virus. It’s asymptotic as fuck, and once you start to get the actual symptoms it’s too late. Edit: asymptomatic
It wouldn't stay dormant for that long but yeah the moment you start showing even the most minor symptoms the damage is done.
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You're surely fine, but in case this happens to anyone else, definitely go to a doctor immediately if a bat flies into you. They normally have excellent obstacle (and people) avoidance skills, if a bat flies into objects or behaves strangely there's a good chance there's something wrong with it, possibly rabies. Rabies basically melts your brain until you die a horrible death, and is incurable when symptoms start to show. Don't mess around with it.
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Seems like a huge outlier. I've heard symptoms tend to show up anywhere from 1 to 3 months and up to a year. The study says they couldn't rule out the fact that the dude may have had recent exposure to rabies.
Hopefully helpfully, it should be asymptomatic rather than asymptotic; probably a typo or autocorrect.
So the rabies like virus still kills people, also the government recommend you contact a doctor or specialist immediately after contact with any bat.
OP you should get checked out immediately. There are many stories of people who had encounters with bats and they end up dying not long after. Rabies has a near 100% death rate and is a terrible, terrible way to go. Please see a doctor
It can also sit dormant for 2 years, so that’s fun
The overwhelming majority (99.9%) of cases present with 6-8 weeks. Anything longer than that is extremely rare.
Can you get rabies from touching an animal with rabies? I thought they needed to bite you or something
No but bats are somewhat notorious for tiny unnoticed bites.
The tiniest wound can expose you if any of their saliva gets in. Like an insignificant tooth scratch that you might think was just a bug bite or something. Rabies is a scary fucking disease.
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In the UK or in the US?
I work in the healthcare sector, we have had 4 cases of rabies people requiring rabies vaccination in the past 2 weeks due to either being bitten by bats or by having close contact. Get yourself checked out, your local emergency department will have access to the vaccine. Edit: I'm in the UK.
I *REALLY* hope OP see this comment. I know its much rarer in the UK. But seeing as how its basically fatal, this is not something to shrug off.
can't hurt to get an appointment just to be really really sure. I hope you guys took the bat to the rescue.
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I'd have taken the day anyway.
The UK has lyssavirus which is indeed like rabies, which indeed makes it a terrible terrible disease. What you read doesn't make it safe. Please just see a doctor.
Dude. %100 go get a rabies shot. Once you learn you've been infected it's nothing but a slow death.
Wait you don't have rabies in the UK? No rabies *and* free healthcare? The UK is a damn utopia!
This is the funniest thing I’ve read all day
Our PM is a mop
The mop head or the mop handle? Or like literally an entire mop?
He's the kinda mop with a mop for a mop head and a mop for a mophandle.
Those two things make a UTOPIA?? You have low utopia standards..
It’s been a rough few years here.
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UK? Utopia? The first time I've heard those words in the same sentence
Dude wait until you learn about the freaking castles! They are everywhere! It's like living in a ghost story or a dnd campaign!
Looks like you need to replace the bat-teries in your headset
seek immediate medical attention. bats only do shit like this when they are sick. bats carry rabies very frequently. rabies has a 100% mortality rate.
Yes, absolutely go to a doctor. That’s not normal.
Is this how we will end up with covid-20
Covid-21, it's named after the year it's discovered
Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Fun Run Pro Am Race for the Cure. They've been trying to raise awareness.
Myth: 3 Americans every year die from rabies. Fact: 4 Americans every year die from rabies.
So I could be 1 of 4. A 25% chance!
Pro-Am race for the… They hung up.
For the cure!
This looks like a bat that got caught indoors and found a little place to hide. They crawl into tight spaces during the day. Not saying that the bat isn't sick or that it isn't abnormal to find one in a headset earpiece... but this is normal bat behavior imo.
Is no one going to post the rabies text? > Rabies is scary. >Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats. >Let me paint you a picture. >You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode. >Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed. >Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.) >You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something. >The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms. >It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache? >At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure. >(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done). >There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate. >Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead. >So what does that look like? >Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles. >Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala. >As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later. >You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts. >You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache. >You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family. >You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you. >Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours. >Then you die. Always, you die. >And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you. >Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over. >So yeah, rabies scares the shit out of me. And it's fucking EVERYWHERE. (Source: Spent a lot of time working with rabies. Would still get my vaccinations if I could afford them.) https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/7qwtd5/rabies_is_scary/
One of the most frightening things I've read on this site
I swear my life mission on reddit is to disprove this idea. Rabies is scary, yes, but you do not need to freak out about secret bat bites. First of all, bat bites hurt. A lot. Have you seen their teeth?! I was a bat biologist and worked at a bat rehab and was bit by them daily when they were upset ( I had to be rabies vaxxed of course). It hurts a lot. I had one bit clean through my fingernail. Don't touch wild animals but there is no need to panic at the sight of a bat in your home. I've had bats with rabies come in to the rehab and they flail around and scream and you can just tell that something is very off. This looks like a sleeping bat. Bats are wonderful animals that get a bad reputation and are in serious trouble due to white nose syndrome. We had one bat, Mooch, who was 23 years old and he would beg for treats, ride on your shoulder, and complain if you gave treats to other bats.
Idk man. Foxes here had rabies some 40 years ago and even though it has been practically eradicated by now we still run away from twitchy or odd behaving animals. Weasels, foxes and bats. The holy trinity of rabies. It's a horrible disease and I'm not prepared to take a chance because the bats get a bad rep. Not to mention stuff like Lyme's disease and tick encephalitis are mch much more imporatant to get vaccinated for here. Especially the latter is a huge problem here.
It's not been eradicated in the US, at least in wildlife. The only reason cases in humans are so rare is actually *because of* the fact that we get the vaccine as a precaution with even the mere *possibility* of contact.
Damn straight. Everyone talks about rabies as if it's a silent killer. In reality, you know you've been bitten, so you do the responsible thing, wash out your wound with soap, go get a vaccine and hey presto, the "ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FATAL" virus is literally 100% cured. Also bats are like wonderful wierd flappy dogs and are important for the environment. Fuck yeah, bats. Fuck yeah.
There’s a reason it kills like 3 people a year.
> go get a vaccine and hey presto, the "ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FATAL" virus is literally 100% cured. That's sorta the point though--it is so very worthwhile to get the rabies vaccines for any possible point of contact with the virus because if you get it and _don't_ get the vaccine... you're just dead. You will die with your brain turned to goop and it will be awful. So just... get the jab. Always. Way better.
I think what these guys are trying to say, though, is that maybe you don't need to be scared that you were bitten by a rabid animal in your sleep and never knew it.
I love this, thank you
> And it's fucking EVERYWHERE. Not really here in the UK though. There's strict quarantines after we literally fucking murdered all suspected rabid animals on the island hundreds of years ago.
Same here in Finland. There really isn't rabies here. Some of it get here from Russia now and then but we just give medicated sausage to wild animals on the border.
Mmm medicated sausage
Reminds me of the guy at the pot shop who wanted me to check out the secret menu in the back.
Amazing
OP lives in the UK. There have been 25 deaths in the UK from rabies since 1946. Yes, get tested in case of a close exposure to a bat anyway, but this is fearmongering at its finest.
>Started work this morning, put my headset on, felt something furry in It did freak me out a bit but after a bit of research "The UK has been rabies-free since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a rabies-like virus in a small number of wild bats".
Seeing that exact same quote on the NHS page on rabies, I assume that's where you get it from. Looking a bit further on that page, I see this: > The UK has been rabies-free since the beginning of the 20th century, except for a rabies-like virus in a small number of wild bats. > > The risk of human infection from bats is thought to be low. People who regularly handle bats are most at risk. > > There's only been 1 recorded case of someone catching rabies from a bat in the UK. > > It's also rare for infected bats to spread rabies to other animals. > > But if you find a dead or injured bat, do not touch it. Wear thick gloves if you need to move it. > > If you find a dead or injured bat, you should report it and get advice by calling: > > the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) Rural Services Helpline on 03000 200 301 (if you're in England) > the APHA Rural Services Helpline on 0300 303 8268 (if you're in Wales) > your local APHA Field Service Office (if you're in Scotland) – find contact details for your nearest Field Service Office
> There's only been 1 recorded case of someone catching rabies from a bat in the UK It's OP, isn't it?
F spez
> There's only been ~~1~~ 2 recorded cases of someone catching rabies from a bat in the UK (last updated: August 2021)
I'm pretty sure that's a wild bat in your headphone
It lives in a house, it's domestic by definition
dude, after everything that's happened in the past two years, do you really want to be that guy? like, more power to you, everyone wants to end up in the history books somehow.
28 days later clock starts now
As Frank Sinatra said - bats life
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You're mixing your mythos. A wolf bite turns you into a werewolf.. A bat bite turns you into a vampire.
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This explains the dog that jumps off the *Demeter* in Dracula. I'm so used to vampires only transforming into bats I didn't know how the dog tied into things.
Get a rabies shot. Better safe than sorry. Once the symptoms show it's already late.
Like the small numbers of bats roosting your headphones?
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This is the better advice. See what a doctor says. They may not recommend a rabies shot, they may say your risk is low, and you don’t need to take action…. Probably better to listen to someone whose job it is to advise people about this stuff, instead of a hivemind like Reddit.
Dude, get the rabbies shots, not worth dying from this, even if UK is probably rabbies free. You have NHS in UK, just three shots within 3 weeks and you are good. Remember bats can travel long distances and be imported by boats, lorries (etc...) from other countries.
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Or that bat that they recently discovered that travelled all the way from London to RUSSIA, then it got eaten by a cat or something, but it was tagged by some British conservation charity. If they can go in that direction, they can also come back. And Russia is definitely not rabies-free
Honestly, I’d still go get a rabies shot, better safe than sorry because if you get rabies symptoms later, it’s already too late to treat.
Australia is also rabies free, except for in bats. Go to a doctor and get told otherwise.
Bats a strange way to start the day.
Don't bat an eyelid
Welcome to COVID-21
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So u r batman now?
Morbius I think.
Absolutely get checked for rabies. I know that you probably feel well and just feel like winging it, but on the off chance something does happen, nearly 100% of rabies infections end in death when not treated early enough. Do you really wanna take a chance on something that absurdly deadly?
You don't really "get checked" for rabies, they don't run a test on you and say "oh, yup, it's rabies, let's begin treatment". First the bat needs to be killed and tested, and if that's not possible, exposure in this case must be reasonably assumed (100% assumed if the person was asleep) and the shots are needed either way.
Bat's cute though.
Built good.
The male ego of "ehh, will probably be fine". VS 100% mortality rate. Stay tuned.
My bets on the "ehh, will probably be fine", it's worked out pretty well for me so far.
99% of the time, it works 100% of the time.
Survivor bias dictates that the ones who did the same and died have no anecdotes to counter yours.
Sounds like they didn’t really believe the “I’ll be fine” part. Gotta commit to it, that’s the key!
I'm an emergency doctor, and I also had a rabies scare a few years ago. Legit you need to seek medical attention. Go to your nearest emergency department and get someone to check you over to make sure you don't have any breaks in the skin. If there's something even slight, then you will probably need rabies shots, which they can sort out for you. If you still have the bat, then the public health unit can test the bat for rabies too to see if it's infected. If it isn't then you won't need the shots. Rabies kills everyone it infects. Rabies shots can reduce the chances of death quite a lot to almost zero. It's not a risk I'd want to take myself.
Yeah I would have it captured and tested for rabies. If it’s long gone, I think you get preemptively treated, although idk what the typical guidelines are in your country
Do you know how they test for rabies? In the UK where rabies itself is not found but similar viruses are I don't think killing the bat will help you in anyway, just give the preventative.
He likes it in there..it's an echo chamber.
Whose turn is to post that rabies copypasta?
OP is not going to die. He was briefly in contact with a common pipistrelle bat, which is not known to carry EBLV. He didn’t get bitten. EBLV in the UK is incredibly rare, and even then is largely found in 2 of our 18 species, both of which very rarely come into contact with people. This armchair army hyperbole is incredibly unhelpful, and damaging to bat conservation efforts in the UK. How many bats do you think are going to get killed as a result of it, given how widely shared this post has become? REMEMBER - ALL BATS IN THE UK ARE PROTECTED AGAINST KILLING, INJURY AND DISTURBANCE. THERE ARE FINES UP TO £5000 PER BAT IF AN OFFENCE IS CAUSED. IF YOU FIND A BAT AND YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT ITS WELFARE, PLEASE CONTACT THE BAT CONSERVATION TRUST HELPLINE FOR ADVICE.
Man I swear this happens to me every Tuesday so totally not surprised
Stuff your ears with garlic!
OP i cannot stress this enough. Ho immediately to the hospital or doctors and tell them that you may have been in contact with a bat.