All right, all right, all right

[pegkerr]

I'm gonna get the shots.

Shit.

Edited to add: Three and a half hours in the ER, since my clinic didn't stock the vaccine. And I have to go back four more times. Argh.

Comments

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I think one part of the calculations you are missing is how many cases of rabies are treated successfully each year. That is, the number of deaths by rabies doesn't seem to take into account how many would die without treatment.

Also, I'm unclear as to whether or not getting the treatment would inoculate against future bites. When I travelled to India, I had the option of getting vaccinated for rabies; if I had that vaccination, it would be a no-brainer to skip treatment for an unproved bat bite.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I believe rabies is 100% fatal if untreated, and 100% curable if treated in time. So the math is right, assuming that now is "in time."

There is a rabies innoculation. I've considered getting it myself, considering all the Third-World travel I do. But so far I haven't. I do not know if the post-rabies shots count towards innoculation.

B

[redbird]

If I read your analysis right, you calculated the risk of rabies based on number of bites (guessed) and number of fatalities. That doesn't actually give us an infection rate; the number of treated bites is also relevant. (Otherwise, we're in a position similar to calculating the risk of driving a car based on the number of crashes, without looking up the number of actual deaths and injuries.)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Yes, the number of successfull treated cases is required to correctly crunch the numbers. My guess is that it won't change my analysis much.

B

[em-h.livejournal.com]

Symptomatic rabies is untreatable and fatal. Exceptions to this are so rare as to be statistically meaningless.

In the research that I have done (after my own low-risk exposure) I have found mention of one person who survived symptomatic rabies, however this was a case where prophylaxis had been applied, but inadequately, not a case where there had been no prophylaxis.

In the very recent past, ONE person has been treated with a new, highly experimental protocol which enabled her to survive symptomatic rabies -- she was, essentially, frozen alive. It is a very risky and certainly not fully tested procedure. But it does mean that there is a single known case of successfully treated symptomatic rabies. ONE, using a very radical procedure.

Odds like that, I think the shots make sense for even a very low risk.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. Seems like lots of poeple think it makes sense. I just know that I was in the exact same situation -- asleep in the same room with a bat that I had no reason to believe bit me -- and it never occured to me to get the shots. Not that I thougth about it and decided not to, that the thought of having rabies never entered my mind until I read Peg's journal a week later.

As Peg said, different people are allowed to make different decisions.

B

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I believe that rabies prophylaxis functions, at least for some period of time, as vaccination. (One would have to examine the documentation about the prophylaxis to determine that length of time.) If one has had the vaccination, one should not require prophylaxis if one's rabies titer is sufficient for adequate defense.

If I ever go to India, I'd get the vaccination. There's something like 10,000 cases of human rabies in India every year, and the main vector is the dog (as it is in pretty much all countries except North America and some European countries). Too easy to pet a puppy, get a scratch, and die (like someone did in England, after visiting India, last month).