I read a news story about a guy who died from rabies after receiving a kidney transplant. Although nobody was aware when he died, the donor of the kidney had contracted rabies after being scratched by a skunk several weeks before he died and his organs were harvested.
I got curious about how the donor got scratched by the skunk, but instead only found this article from August, which informed me that the U.S. has a rabies outbreak, and has more deaths from rabies in the last year than several previous years…
Not sure if people were already talking about this outbreak, and I just missed it? It’s been a bit of a weird year, and there’s been a lot of crazy shit to keep up with.
Anyway, this is also how I ended up reading the sentence informing me some people are worried dogs are getting autism from vaccines.
Outbreaks of rabies seem to be rising across the U.S., CDC surveillance shows
Just in case anybody didn’t read the article and doesn’t already know: Wild animals infected with rabies aren’t just the stereotypical raging aggressive terror beasts you see in the media, they can also be super friendly and usually docile.
Obviously the best advice is just to leave wild animals alone and keep your distance. However, if you see a feral or wild animal behaving in an uncharacteristic way, added caution is needed. This includes things like seeing traditionally nocturnal animals like skunks and raccoons out and about during the daytime or having them be unusually friendly / fearless / docile to the point where they don’t retreat and may even come up to investigate you. It doesn’t mean that they are infected with rabies, but that’s definitely a potential symptom of rabies (but can also be a sign of other infectious diseases that should activate your spidey senses).
You are not a Disney princess and
CinderellaSnow White is not a realistic presentation of how healthy wild animals act.Hey, that hurts!
For you, I’ll make an exception.
OwO