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

[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