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