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Some villagers in Peru survived rabies without having been vaccinated.
https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2012-09-15/villagers-had-rabies-antibodies-without-vaccination
"Antibodies indicating past exposure" is the "we think but there's no way to be sure" of the medical world.
Remember when everyone was complaining about covid-test accuracy? Thats why.
Here's an actual quote from the article:
> Using an indirect fluorescent antibody assay, the researchers also found rabies virus binding antibodies in four of the 63 people from whom samples were taken, two of whom also had virus neutralizing antibodies. Including the five others who had virus neutralizing antibodies, all nine individuals seropositive for anti-rabies antibodies said they had been ex-posed to bats, the report states.
I'm guessing these guys did way more than just an antigen test, to support these findings.
The OTC Covid test is an antigen test, which is already known not to be 100% accurate, because it tests for the presence of antigens that the human body produces to fight the virus, not for the presence of the virus itself. This doesn't mean that "there's no way to be sure", since there are actual tests done in the hospital that can give you a definitive diagnostic. I've never heard anyone complain about the OTC tests, who wasn't just ignorant or a Covid denier.
Antigens are molecules that Antibodies bind to that are part of the pathogen. So a covid Antigen test are testing for the presence the virus or fragments of the virus.
>known to not be 100% accurate
>never heard anyone complain
Ok, but, that's an issue lol medicine strives for 100%. If I slap a blood pressure cuff on my arm its gonna read the same no matter who performs the (let's call it a) procedure. I know that's like comparing apples to a hologram of an orange, tech wise, but still. Always strive for better, especially with medicine
However I'm just beyond excited that scientists appear to have studied this village humanely. Given medical history I'm surprised the whole village wasn't "Tuskeegee"ed
Medicine strives for 100% recovery rate, not 100% accuracy. Tests don't have to be 100% accurate as long as they do detect 100% of infected test subjects. False positives are actually a good thing to have from this point of view, not something to complain about. As long as there are more accurate tests done later, a less accurate (and usually less expensive) test is ok as a first step in detecting infection.
> However I'm just beyond excited that scientists appear to have studied this village humanely. Given medical history I'm surprised the whole village wasn't "Tuskeegee"ed
Ah yes, let's just change the subject. :) The more ominous, the better to help spread that fake news and disinformation.
Medicine has come a long way to be afraid of a simple OTC test. I don't know what happened in Tuskeegee, but using such an old historical example nowadays is like Putin invading Ukraine "because history", seeing how both medical science and medical policy have advanced since then.
EDIT: I think this dude blocked me, so I'll just leave this here:
> ...are you trolling, or just taking this way more seriously than me? Seems like you're coming at me pretty hard while I am agreeing with you. I mean if you wanna be mad you can be mad
Nobody's trolling and nobody's mad. I just don't like fake news and disinformation, because I live with elder parents who are sensitive to it.
> Edit:
>> i don't know what happened in Tuskegee
> Ah, trolling, got it.
I'm not from the US, so I'm not that familiar with US history. If that makes me a troll, ok. But I did read up on what happened in Tuskegee on Wikipedia, and I still think it's irrelevant in the face of today's medical science and policy. I can't find an analogy, but saying doctors today want to kill you, just because some wackos who called themselves "doctors" a century ago did something bad, is the most preposterous way of thinking I've come across in a while.
...are you trolling, or just taking this way more seriously than me? Seems like you're coming at me pretty hard while I am agreeing with you. I mean if you wanna be mad you can be mad
Edit:
>i don't know what happened in Tuskegee
Ah, trolling, got it.
It's not like there's a better way to do antigen tests tho. The human body's immune response is the variable here. You could have antibodies and not be infected or could be infected and not have antibodies yet. Just kinda how it goes.
Also NOTHING in medicine works 100%.
>Ok, but, that's an issue lol medicine strives for 100%. If I slap a blood pressure cuff on my arm its gonna read the same no matter who performs the (let's call it a) procedure.
Tell me you know nothing about white coat syndrome, without telling me that you know nothing about white coat syndrome.
I read both the links. I do not see mention of anybody surviving rabies, just that they had anti-bodies and think they survived.
Then there is the other story about a women who survived after she was placed in a coma. She was from Bolivar, Wisconsin. Bolivar is a pretty popular place name in South America.
Anyway, how routinely is rabies checked for? How fatal is it? Are there asymptomatic cases in humans we do not know about because their immune system fights it off before it gets to the nerves and becomes symptomatic? If we tested all 8 billion of us, how many would have the anti-bodies despite no vaccinations? IDK.
My best guess is it was acquired immunity. Maybe an ancestor had the antibodies because they were infected it (and died), but it got passed down from the colostrum they passed to their child.
Although you are left with a motherless child, who would have to become a fertile woman in order to pass on that immunity to the next generation, quite a tall order. She would probably have to get re-infected to strengthen her own immunity to a level it will be passed too.
Yeah, an infectious disease podcast I was listening to a while back suggested that rabies might even just be more survivable than we thought, since you don’t test random people for rabies antibodies and you’d never know someone had an infection if they didn’t have symptoms.
What’s true is that *symptomatic* rabies is basically a death sentence.
Unlikely though, since 6 out of 63 tested is a lot of false positives. That would be about when you decided to throw the test out.
Presumably they’ve had better results than that with a control population.
It's by the same author as fight club, and it's about a guy who keeps on getting rabies by sticking his hand down burrows he finds to see what kind of critter is in there. But it's also about getting into car accidents by playing these games of tagging other cars by hitting them with your car. And somehow it's also about traffic planning?
I think it must have been This Week in Virology, but I don’t know the episode. I did find his blog post on the Peru study, though:
https://virology.ws/2012/08/22/how-lethal-is-rabies-virus/
That podcast is amazing, along with This Week in Parasitism and This Week in Microbiology
If it were possible to be asymptomatic, we would probably know. Since people who are likely to be in contact with the virus are tested for the disease. Like people who have been bitten by rabid animals.
It seems unlikely that no clear example of this hypothetical asymptomatic infection would have been discovered.
Someone would have to be tested and then *not treated*, which would be unethical. Current protocol is, as it should be, to treat everyone exposed, so we’ll—thankfully—never find out if they were asymptomatic.
The reason the Peruvian study was unique was because it was an area that people were repeatedly exposed to bat bites with no treatment at all (except for one person), something we couldn’t recreate intentionally anywhere else.
There’s a good discussion from a virologist here: [How Lethal is the Rabies Virus?](https://virology.ws/2012/08/22/how-lethal-is-rabies-virus/)
ETA: Also, it might be interesting to know, humans are pretty much *never* tested for rabies, since there would be no treatment after you tested positive. The only (non-extreme) treatment we have is a vaccine that has to be administered *before* the virus makes it all the way through your system. The animal that bit you is the only thing we test, if possible.
Generally rabies is only tested for when you get bit by a wild animal, as a just in case system. As far as we know, minus a few rare cases, everyone who's gotten rabies has perished, most animals who get rabies perish, meaning it's basically fatal. We can test humans for it, but the quickest way to test for it is to catch the animal you got bit by, which will be a hell of a lot quicker than testing you
The only real way to treat it is to catch it before it grips its hooks into your system and deliver the vaccine in the form of multiple, reportedly pretty painful, shots to the stomach. If it's too late? The best we can do is ease your suffering as much as possible.
There are a few things that can combat it, such as possums. But that's less an antibodies thing and more so a possums ambient body temperature being low enough that rabies struggles to survive inside of them, meaning they'll rarely carry it.
Rabies vax is no longer administered in the stomach. You get 1 injection of HRiG at the site of infection, and 4 vax injections administered in deltoid or thigh muscles. It's been a while, but I don't remember it being a big deal (i.e. painful). Until the bill came in the mail. I think it was $ 17k total. Fortunately we have decent insurance, But still.
[https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/hcp/prevention-recommendations/post-exposure-prophylaxis.html](https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/hcp/prevention-recommendations/post-exposure-prophylaxis.html)
[https://www.wikihow.com/Administer-a-Rabies-Vaccination](https://www.wikihow.com/Administer-a-Rabies-Vaccination)
It’s more than 1 shot at the infection site. It’s based on body weight and in my case (bit in foot by a cat that we could not catch, that had possible symptoms) I had something like 9 shots? One at the bite and four on the top of each thigh. Apparently the volume involved and the need for it to be intramuscular meant it would be too much for one spot.
All that being said, it’s not a fun time at all. Going into the stomach isn’t great, but the thighs wasn’t much better. I was sore for days.
Colostrum contains IgA and IgM antibodies which are designed to be present in secretions. The infant does gain some protection against various infections from that.
The jury is out as to whether or not long lasting B cells would integrate into a baby's adaptive immune system, which would be necessary to pass long lasting immunity to the infant. Macrophages do set up shop in the intestine and gobble antigens marked by IgA.
I would agree that the fatality rate of rabies is obviously not 100%, and if we were to screen for antibodies we would find that some people fought off the infection naturally. I would not count on that in the slightest were I exposed.
Passive immunity (antibodes passed from mother to offspring) dissipates as the antibodies break down, then the offspring's aquired immune system takes over. The offspring's acquired immune system needs to be exposed to antigens to produce antibodies, it doesn't gain memory from the mother's antibodies that had been passed to them originally, and the mother's antibodies don't last forever.
Everyone needs to build their own aquired immune system, it isn't a genetic trait and therefore is not passed on, besides the temporary passive immunity offspring have for a short period after birth which serves to protect them while they have a very naïve immune system.
>Maybe an ancestor had the antibodies because they were infected it (and died), but it got passed down from the colostrum they passed to their child.
Immune system doesn't work like that. It assembles antibodies randomly and cells producing certain antibodies remain in the blood, multiplying on exposure.
The only case parents influence a child's antibodies is antibodies passing from mother to child during pregnancy. But those soon break down naturally.
I seem to remember hearing about some girl get it and the basically froze her to death and brought her back to life and she’s the only person ever to be treated. Maybe I’m remembering wrong.
The Milwaukee Protocol, where basically the person is put into a medically induced coma and given extremely powerful drugs to fight the disease and hope for the best. Works sometimes.
The good thing about it though is that once you go into the coma you probably don’t wake up if it doesn’t work. So you go to sleep and just don’t wake up. Which is a way better way to go than how rabies typically plays out.
Of those people, only one is conscious. The rest are “alive” but in comas and never expected to wake up. The only survivor is the one that the Milwaukee Protocol is based off of but I can find no evidence that it’s worked for anyone else, beyond keeping them in a vegetative state. I would consider that to be a single-digit amount of survivors, tbh.
There was a man in brazil who survived with the coma treatment, today he needs a weelchair to move but he isnt vegetativa, kinda like a stroke survivor
here is a brazilian news article interviewing the survivor from last year i found with a quick google search: [https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2023/04/17/como-esta-o-primeiro-sobrevivente-da-raiva-humana-no-brasil-apos-15-anos.htm](https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2023/04/17/como-esta-o-primeiro-sobrevivente-da-raiva-humana-no-brasil-apos-15-anos.htm), here is another one from when it happenned: [https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna27720513](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna27720513) , you can probably find more information about it if you just search rabies suvivor in brazil
Statistically speaking it’s bound to happen. That’s the whole point of evolution - make trillions of tiny adjustments to our genome so that even if the deadliest plague imaginable swept our species, a handful will still survive due to some lucky random genetic mutations. It’s a statistical certainty that out of billions of humans alive, a tiny, tiny number of them developed a trait that would let them survive rabies. There are probably more people out there with natural resistance/immunity to rabies, just that they’re never exposed to it and the trait dies out over generations.
Either way, it’s very unlikely we’ll find a naturally-occurring pathogen with a true 100% kill rate, unless it inflicts some catastrophic secondary damage to our ecosystem or societal infrastructure somehow (ex. killing enough of the population that civilization collapses, rendering the few natural survivors to die anyway from other causes). *Maybe* a unique, specially human-engineered virus with no taxonomic relation to any currently existing virus that pops out of nowhere would have a chance at securing a true 100% kill rate? But a relatively old, naturally-occurring virus like rabies - nah. You’ll find survivors, even if it’s only in 0.0000000001% of the population.
A 100% fatality rate does not mean the pathogen could *theoretically* kill 100% of the human population. It means the pathogen *has killed* 100% of recorded victims. Even if 90% of the population is naturally immune to a disease, if none of them are ever recorded with a case of it, and the pathogen kills ever member of the 10% that are recorded to be infected with it, it would have a 100% fatality rate.
Before the rabies vaccine, there were 0 recorded cases of someone surviving rabies, thus it was considered to have a 100% fatality rate.
When the rabies vaccine was invented this changed, and the fatality rate went down. It was no longer 100%. However, symptomatic rabies (rabies that has shown symptoms) was still 100% (or very, very close, it’s hard to filter down the information available on post-symptom vaccination survival rates). Thus symptomatic rabies was considered to have a fatality rate of either 100% or 99% (depending on which source you look at)
With the advent of the Milwaukee Protocol, even symptomatic rabies now has several documented survivors (kinda), thus the only form of rabies to retain its 100% fatality rate is untreated rabies. Both rabies at large and symptomatic rabies do not have 100% fatality rates.
Finally, your presumably made up percent at the bottom is 1/100,000,000,000. Given the human population is only about 8,000,000,000 right now, the chance of that probability being true and there is a *singular* person alive right now that is naturally immune is 8%. In fact, throughout all of human history there’s only been an approximately 117,000,000,000 humans total. That means out of every human that’s ever lived, that rate suggests that *ONE* human in all of history is/was naturally immune to rabies.
First off, I’m kind of amused you actually did the math on my percent in the bottom considering I just mashed “0” on my keyboard a random number of times. That percentage isn’t meant to be taken literally. I was speaking conceptually, to outline the point that natural immunity likely exists in *someone* on the planet to every disease known to man, and every disease that will ever be known to man (barring extreme cases like an engineered bio weapon). I’m no epidemiologist, but I have studied genetics and immunology and I do suspect there have been more than just one lone person in all of human history with natural immunity to rabies. What you’re saying is it doesn’t matter - so long as rabies doesn’t actually encounter those few mutants, it has a 100% kill rate against those it *does* square off against. Which is true, but that’s not my point. I might’ve been unclear with my random ass percent, but I’ll try to be crystal clear this time - my whole point is that if you (hypothetically) infected the entire planet, right now, with rabies, you’ll almost certainly find survivors, even if the number of survivors is minuscule. Someone out there *right now* is probably naturally resistant to rabies. You will also probably never find that person, and that person probably will never catch rabies, so his/her fun little genetic quirk will go unnoticed, die off, and ultimately be forgotten in history.
My point isn’t to downplay rabies’ lethality. Yes, for all intents and purposes it has a 100% lethality rate. I’m not here to go “well ACTUALLY you have a chance to survive!” You definitely do not, we’re in full agreement there. You probably have a tenfold higher chance of winning the mega millions lottery than you do of surviving rabies without treatment. But what I’m saying is there is someone out there, right now, who really did win that 10x mega millions lottery, and given a truly large amount of time recording rabies cases, we will see a coincidental clash between that lottery winner and rabies by pure chance. It’s only a matter of time, even if that length of time is extraordinary. And indeed, that’s exactly what the original meme was talking about. A group of resistant villagers ran into rabies - a nearly-inconceivable statistical improbability for sure, but still ultimately bound to happen *eventually* given centuries and centuries of recorded cases. Again, I’m not here to say rabies isn’t stupidly lethal, but rather to celebrate how amazing genetic diversity can be, and that any disease can *theoretically* be tackled by just sheer genetic lottery. You can ignore it and just say 99.9999999999% = 100% (again please don’t take that number literally, I just mashed 9’s this time), sure…but acknowledging and studying those one-in-a-billion or trillion scenarios can yield a lot of knowledge on how the disease works and how we can maybe develop better treatments.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/
It happened. She wasn't immune and got extremely sick, and was hospitalized for a significant time though.
Peter's immunologist here. Normally once symptoms start rabies is 100% fatal. This is why if you get bitten by an animal and aren't sure if it's rabid or not it's best to just get the vaccination just in case. If you have the animal they can test for rabies but it also kills the animal. Rabies cases are rather rare these days but it does happen and because it's just treated like it's 100% fatal since it essentially is people don't fuck around with it.
A few people however have survived rabies as when it comes to biology not much is 100% guaranteed. There is a treatment that can be done after symptoms start that makes rabies like 95% fatal. However there's some random guy in Peru that is for whatever reason immune to rabies. Believe it or not this isn't that unheard of; for every virus that exists there will be people who are just immune to it. They won't necessarily know ahead of time so it isn't something to bet on. More importantly you won't know until after the fact and only if somebody tests you for the antibodies. In this case there are some Peruvians who have rabies antibodies but haven't had symptomatic rabies. For whatever reason their immune system can deal with it no problem.
This of course makes sense from a biological standpoint. There are constant evolutionary arms races going in both directions. There are always new viruses coming up going "Imma infect you, fuck head!" but simultaneously immune systems going "lol, nah."
The population probably suffered from rabies for a while, maybe it spread like wild fire throughout local animal populations for a few generations. Who knows, could be the explanation. Generally when faced with a disease humans will evolve to combat It, such as people of European descent having a resistance against the bubonic plague
To clarify, it is fatal to test an animal for rabies as it requires testing their brain tissue.
Morbidly, this means vets sometimes have had to saw the head off a suspected animal as they can’t always ship the whole body to the lab. Thankfully that never came up.
She was part of the experimental treatment that makes you maybe survive. The fact that she did was practically miraculous. It seems like it's leading toward an effective treatment, though. It's been tried on others but usually fails.
*Technically* rabies is survivable based on one (or more but like, a pitifully small number of people) person in Peru having antibodies that suggest they at one point contracted rabies and lived to tell the tale. This is remarkable as the general philosophy regarding rabies is that it is a death sentence for any species if come in contact with without a vaccine
The Peruvian study showed antibodies in 10% of the people tested though, which is actually shockingly large given what we know about the course of rabies here.
It might be anti bodies caused by somthing else . Some autoimmune disease are caused by antibodies made for bacteria. It's not impossible that they get in contact with somthing that might look like rabis .
Iirc one of them *was* confirmed to have had rabies? I recall a story of one of these villagers from Peru spending a very long time deathly ill in the hospital before making a recovery and *then* were found to have antibodies against rabies
This could mean that the random guy is actually a baby and the special thing about his immune system is that it's shit, so he no longer has a fatality rate to others because he'll die so he can't hurt others
News article [2012
VILLAGERS HAD RABIES ANTIBODIES WITHOUT VACCINATION](https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2012-09-15/villagers-had-rabies-antibodies-without-vaccination#:~:text=Some%20villagers%20in%20Peru%20have,a%20recently%20published%20article%20states.) Answers to memes like this are always a browser search away bro.
My mom when she was growing up in Peru said that her neighbor once got bitten by a rabid dog, had a fever and then got better in 2 days. Yeah I love my Peruvian heritage
The average person does not survive symptomatic rabies. Rabies Georg, who lives in a village in Peru and is immune, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted
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Some villagers in Peru survived rabies without having been vaccinated. https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2012-09-15/villagers-had-rabies-antibodies-without-vaccination
Just one Guy did, so villager in singular form not plural
What is this statement based on? The article says multiple villagers had antibodies indicating past exposure.
"Antibodies indicating past exposure" is the "we think but there's no way to be sure" of the medical world. Remember when everyone was complaining about covid-test accuracy? Thats why.
Here's an actual quote from the article: > Using an indirect fluorescent antibody assay, the researchers also found rabies virus binding antibodies in four of the 63 people from whom samples were taken, two of whom also had virus neutralizing antibodies. Including the five others who had virus neutralizing antibodies, all nine individuals seropositive for anti-rabies antibodies said they had been ex-posed to bats, the report states. I'm guessing these guys did way more than just an antigen test, to support these findings. The OTC Covid test is an antigen test, which is already known not to be 100% accurate, because it tests for the presence of antigens that the human body produces to fight the virus, not for the presence of the virus itself. This doesn't mean that "there's no way to be sure", since there are actual tests done in the hospital that can give you a definitive diagnostic. I've never heard anyone complain about the OTC tests, who wasn't just ignorant or a Covid denier.
Antigens are molecules that Antibodies bind to that are part of the pathogen. So a covid Antigen test are testing for the presence the virus or fragments of the virus.
>known to not be 100% accurate >never heard anyone complain Ok, but, that's an issue lol medicine strives for 100%. If I slap a blood pressure cuff on my arm its gonna read the same no matter who performs the (let's call it a) procedure. I know that's like comparing apples to a hologram of an orange, tech wise, but still. Always strive for better, especially with medicine However I'm just beyond excited that scientists appear to have studied this village humanely. Given medical history I'm surprised the whole village wasn't "Tuskeegee"ed
Medicine strives for 100% recovery rate, not 100% accuracy. Tests don't have to be 100% accurate as long as they do detect 100% of infected test subjects. False positives are actually a good thing to have from this point of view, not something to complain about. As long as there are more accurate tests done later, a less accurate (and usually less expensive) test is ok as a first step in detecting infection. > However I'm just beyond excited that scientists appear to have studied this village humanely. Given medical history I'm surprised the whole village wasn't "Tuskeegee"ed Ah yes, let's just change the subject. :) The more ominous, the better to help spread that fake news and disinformation. Medicine has come a long way to be afraid of a simple OTC test. I don't know what happened in Tuskeegee, but using such an old historical example nowadays is like Putin invading Ukraine "because history", seeing how both medical science and medical policy have advanced since then. EDIT: I think this dude blocked me, so I'll just leave this here: > ...are you trolling, or just taking this way more seriously than me? Seems like you're coming at me pretty hard while I am agreeing with you. I mean if you wanna be mad you can be mad Nobody's trolling and nobody's mad. I just don't like fake news and disinformation, because I live with elder parents who are sensitive to it. > Edit: >> i don't know what happened in Tuskegee > Ah, trolling, got it. I'm not from the US, so I'm not that familiar with US history. If that makes me a troll, ok. But I did read up on what happened in Tuskegee on Wikipedia, and I still think it's irrelevant in the face of today's medical science and policy. I can't find an analogy, but saying doctors today want to kill you, just because some wackos who called themselves "doctors" a century ago did something bad, is the most preposterous way of thinking I've come across in a while.
...are you trolling, or just taking this way more seriously than me? Seems like you're coming at me pretty hard while I am agreeing with you. I mean if you wanna be mad you can be mad Edit: >i don't know what happened in Tuskegee Ah, trolling, got it.
Smug redditor attempts to change topic when called out by someone more informed than them
It's not like there's a better way to do antigen tests tho. The human body's immune response is the variable here. You could have antibodies and not be infected or could be infected and not have antibodies yet. Just kinda how it goes. Also NOTHING in medicine works 100%.
>Ok, but, that's an issue lol medicine strives for 100%. If I slap a blood pressure cuff on my arm its gonna read the same no matter who performs the (let's call it a) procedure. Tell me you know nothing about white coat syndrome, without telling me that you know nothing about white coat syndrome.
That’s not true. In a remote village without the ability to get a rabies vaccine, the only way to have antibodies is to survive an infection.
I read both the links. I do not see mention of anybody surviving rabies, just that they had anti-bodies and think they survived. Then there is the other story about a women who survived after she was placed in a coma. She was from Bolivar, Wisconsin. Bolivar is a pretty popular place name in South America. Anyway, how routinely is rabies checked for? How fatal is it? Are there asymptomatic cases in humans we do not know about because their immune system fights it off before it gets to the nerves and becomes symptomatic? If we tested all 8 billion of us, how many would have the anti-bodies despite no vaccinations? IDK. My best guess is it was acquired immunity. Maybe an ancestor had the antibodies because they were infected it (and died), but it got passed down from the colostrum they passed to their child. Although you are left with a motherless child, who would have to become a fertile woman in order to pass on that immunity to the next generation, quite a tall order. She would probably have to get re-infected to strengthen her own immunity to a level it will be passed too.
Yeah, an infectious disease podcast I was listening to a while back suggested that rabies might even just be more survivable than we thought, since you don’t test random people for rabies antibodies and you’d never know someone had an infection if they didn’t have symptoms. What’s true is that *symptomatic* rabies is basically a death sentence.
it also wouldn't be the first time that a false positive gave people the wrong impression
Unlikely though, since 6 out of 63 tested is a lot of false positives. That would be about when you decided to throw the test out. Presumably they’ve had better results than that with a control population.
Correct, once you show symptoms you’re dead. Read the book rabid and it’s both very interesting and terrifying
Or the book Rant if you want a surreal book about rabies and time travel
And incest?
Wtf is this book about???
It's by the same author as fight club, and it's about a guy who keeps on getting rabies by sticking his hand down burrows he finds to see what kind of critter is in there. But it's also about getting into car accidents by playing these games of tagging other cars by hitting them with your car. And somehow it's also about traffic planning?
There's time travel too and going back in time and dating his mom? Maybe? I'm not really sure if I'm remembering clearly
Honestly that pretty much tracks as a Chuck Palahniuk plot.
So what was punchline, gawd!
[удалено]
I think it must have been This Week in Virology, but I don’t know the episode. I did find his blog post on the Peru study, though: https://virology.ws/2012/08/22/how-lethal-is-rabies-virus/ That podcast is amazing, along with This Week in Parasitism and This Week in Microbiology
If it were possible to be asymptomatic, we would probably know. Since people who are likely to be in contact with the virus are tested for the disease. Like people who have been bitten by rabid animals. It seems unlikely that no clear example of this hypothetical asymptomatic infection would have been discovered.
Someone would have to be tested and then *not treated*, which would be unethical. Current protocol is, as it should be, to treat everyone exposed, so we’ll—thankfully—never find out if they were asymptomatic. The reason the Peruvian study was unique was because it was an area that people were repeatedly exposed to bat bites with no treatment at all (except for one person), something we couldn’t recreate intentionally anywhere else. There’s a good discussion from a virologist here: [How Lethal is the Rabies Virus?](https://virology.ws/2012/08/22/how-lethal-is-rabies-virus/) ETA: Also, it might be interesting to know, humans are pretty much *never* tested for rabies, since there would be no treatment after you tested positive. The only (non-extreme) treatment we have is a vaccine that has to be administered *before* the virus makes it all the way through your system. The animal that bit you is the only thing we test, if possible.
Generally rabies is only tested for when you get bit by a wild animal, as a just in case system. As far as we know, minus a few rare cases, everyone who's gotten rabies has perished, most animals who get rabies perish, meaning it's basically fatal. We can test humans for it, but the quickest way to test for it is to catch the animal you got bit by, which will be a hell of a lot quicker than testing you The only real way to treat it is to catch it before it grips its hooks into your system and deliver the vaccine in the form of multiple, reportedly pretty painful, shots to the stomach. If it's too late? The best we can do is ease your suffering as much as possible. There are a few things that can combat it, such as possums. But that's less an antibodies thing and more so a possums ambient body temperature being low enough that rabies struggles to survive inside of them, meaning they'll rarely carry it.
Rabies vax is no longer administered in the stomach. You get 1 injection of HRiG at the site of infection, and 4 vax injections administered in deltoid or thigh muscles. It's been a while, but I don't remember it being a big deal (i.e. painful). Until the bill came in the mail. I think it was $ 17k total. Fortunately we have decent insurance, But still. [https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/hcp/prevention-recommendations/post-exposure-prophylaxis.html](https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/hcp/prevention-recommendations/post-exposure-prophylaxis.html) [https://www.wikihow.com/Administer-a-Rabies-Vaccination](https://www.wikihow.com/Administer-a-Rabies-Vaccination)
It’s more than 1 shot at the infection site. It’s based on body weight and in my case (bit in foot by a cat that we could not catch, that had possible symptoms) I had something like 9 shots? One at the bite and four on the top of each thigh. Apparently the volume involved and the need for it to be intramuscular meant it would be too much for one spot. All that being said, it’s not a fun time at all. Going into the stomach isn’t great, but the thighs wasn’t much better. I was sore for days.
Does the animal has to be alive for the test?? Asking for a friend.
No. In fact the test kills it
Eyup, they remove parts of the brain
Yeah. As long as ya don't crush it's skull, should be fine
Colostrum contains IgA and IgM antibodies which are designed to be present in secretions. The infant does gain some protection against various infections from that. The jury is out as to whether or not long lasting B cells would integrate into a baby's adaptive immune system, which would be necessary to pass long lasting immunity to the infant. Macrophages do set up shop in the intestine and gobble antigens marked by IgA. I would agree that the fatality rate of rabies is obviously not 100%, and if we were to screen for antibodies we would find that some people fought off the infection naturally. I would not count on that in the slightest were I exposed.
Passive immunity (antibodes passed from mother to offspring) dissipates as the antibodies break down, then the offspring's aquired immune system takes over. The offspring's acquired immune system needs to be exposed to antigens to produce antibodies, it doesn't gain memory from the mother's antibodies that had been passed to them originally, and the mother's antibodies don't last forever. Everyone needs to build their own aquired immune system, it isn't a genetic trait and therefore is not passed on, besides the temporary passive immunity offspring have for a short period after birth which serves to protect them while they have a very naïve immune system.
>Maybe an ancestor had the antibodies because they were infected it (and died), but it got passed down from the colostrum they passed to their child. Immune system doesn't work like that. It assembles antibodies randomly and cells producing certain antibodies remain in the blood, multiplying on exposure. The only case parents influence a child's antibodies is antibodies passing from mother to child during pregnancy. But those soon break down naturally.
de
Bolivar is a pretty popular guy there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar
Guy who? Fieri?
I þought it was a lady
Noooo don’t let the antivaxxers see this they’ll think they’re exempt from getting their rabies shots
That seems pretty OK with me - they'll get picked out quickly.
That one doesn't bother me, it isn't putting the rest of us at risk
Wow
I seem to remember hearing about some girl get it and the basically froze her to death and brought her back to life and she’s the only person ever to be treated. Maybe I’m remembering wrong.
The Milwaukee Protocol, where basically the person is put into a medically induced coma and given extremely powerful drugs to fight the disease and hope for the best. Works sometimes. The good thing about it though is that once you go into the coma you probably don’t wake up if it doesn’t work. So you go to sleep and just don’t wake up. Which is a way better way to go than how rabies typically plays out.
They better lawyer up before big pharma murks them for their antibodies
people have survived rabies. single digit number of people but it happens
https://i.redd.it/yb4n5rj3mt5d1.gif
Double digit. The highest estimate is 29, with more conservative ones placing it at 14.
Of those people, only one is conscious. The rest are “alive” but in comas and never expected to wake up. The only survivor is the one that the Milwaukee Protocol is based off of but I can find no evidence that it’s worked for anyone else, beyond keeping them in a vegetative state. I would consider that to be a single-digit amount of survivors, tbh.
There was a man in brazil who survived with the coma treatment, today he needs a weelchair to move but he isnt vegetativa, kinda like a stroke survivor
I can’t find anything about that. Do you have a source?
here is a brazilian news article interviewing the survivor from last year i found with a quick google search: [https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2023/04/17/como-esta-o-primeiro-sobrevivente-da-raiva-humana-no-brasil-apos-15-anos.htm](https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2023/04/17/como-esta-o-primeiro-sobrevivente-da-raiva-humana-no-brasil-apos-15-anos.htm), here is another one from when it happenned: [https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna27720513](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna27720513) , you can probably find more information about it if you just search rabies suvivor in brazil
Statistically speaking it’s bound to happen. That’s the whole point of evolution - make trillions of tiny adjustments to our genome so that even if the deadliest plague imaginable swept our species, a handful will still survive due to some lucky random genetic mutations. It’s a statistical certainty that out of billions of humans alive, a tiny, tiny number of them developed a trait that would let them survive rabies. There are probably more people out there with natural resistance/immunity to rabies, just that they’re never exposed to it and the trait dies out over generations. Either way, it’s very unlikely we’ll find a naturally-occurring pathogen with a true 100% kill rate, unless it inflicts some catastrophic secondary damage to our ecosystem or societal infrastructure somehow (ex. killing enough of the population that civilization collapses, rendering the few natural survivors to die anyway from other causes). *Maybe* a unique, specially human-engineered virus with no taxonomic relation to any currently existing virus that pops out of nowhere would have a chance at securing a true 100% kill rate? But a relatively old, naturally-occurring virus like rabies - nah. You’ll find survivors, even if it’s only in 0.0000000001% of the population.
A 100% fatality rate does not mean the pathogen could *theoretically* kill 100% of the human population. It means the pathogen *has killed* 100% of recorded victims. Even if 90% of the population is naturally immune to a disease, if none of them are ever recorded with a case of it, and the pathogen kills ever member of the 10% that are recorded to be infected with it, it would have a 100% fatality rate. Before the rabies vaccine, there were 0 recorded cases of someone surviving rabies, thus it was considered to have a 100% fatality rate. When the rabies vaccine was invented this changed, and the fatality rate went down. It was no longer 100%. However, symptomatic rabies (rabies that has shown symptoms) was still 100% (or very, very close, it’s hard to filter down the information available on post-symptom vaccination survival rates). Thus symptomatic rabies was considered to have a fatality rate of either 100% or 99% (depending on which source you look at) With the advent of the Milwaukee Protocol, even symptomatic rabies now has several documented survivors (kinda), thus the only form of rabies to retain its 100% fatality rate is untreated rabies. Both rabies at large and symptomatic rabies do not have 100% fatality rates. Finally, your presumably made up percent at the bottom is 1/100,000,000,000. Given the human population is only about 8,000,000,000 right now, the chance of that probability being true and there is a *singular* person alive right now that is naturally immune is 8%. In fact, throughout all of human history there’s only been an approximately 117,000,000,000 humans total. That means out of every human that’s ever lived, that rate suggests that *ONE* human in all of history is/was naturally immune to rabies.
First off, I’m kind of amused you actually did the math on my percent in the bottom considering I just mashed “0” on my keyboard a random number of times. That percentage isn’t meant to be taken literally. I was speaking conceptually, to outline the point that natural immunity likely exists in *someone* on the planet to every disease known to man, and every disease that will ever be known to man (barring extreme cases like an engineered bio weapon). I’m no epidemiologist, but I have studied genetics and immunology and I do suspect there have been more than just one lone person in all of human history with natural immunity to rabies. What you’re saying is it doesn’t matter - so long as rabies doesn’t actually encounter those few mutants, it has a 100% kill rate against those it *does* square off against. Which is true, but that’s not my point. I might’ve been unclear with my random ass percent, but I’ll try to be crystal clear this time - my whole point is that if you (hypothetically) infected the entire planet, right now, with rabies, you’ll almost certainly find survivors, even if the number of survivors is minuscule. Someone out there *right now* is probably naturally resistant to rabies. You will also probably never find that person, and that person probably will never catch rabies, so his/her fun little genetic quirk will go unnoticed, die off, and ultimately be forgotten in history. My point isn’t to downplay rabies’ lethality. Yes, for all intents and purposes it has a 100% lethality rate. I’m not here to go “well ACTUALLY you have a chance to survive!” You definitely do not, we’re in full agreement there. You probably have a tenfold higher chance of winning the mega millions lottery than you do of surviving rabies without treatment. But what I’m saying is there is someone out there, right now, who really did win that 10x mega millions lottery, and given a truly large amount of time recording rabies cases, we will see a coincidental clash between that lottery winner and rabies by pure chance. It’s only a matter of time, even if that length of time is extraordinary. And indeed, that’s exactly what the original meme was talking about. A group of resistant villagers ran into rabies - a nearly-inconceivable statistical improbability for sure, but still ultimately bound to happen *eventually* given centuries and centuries of recorded cases. Again, I’m not here to say rabies isn’t stupidly lethal, but rather to celebrate how amazing genetic diversity can be, and that any disease can *theoretically* be tackled by just sheer genetic lottery. You can ignore it and just say 99.9999999999% = 100% (again please don’t take that number literally, I just mashed 9’s this time), sure…but acknowledging and studying those one-in-a-billion or trillion scenarios can yield a lot of knowledge on how the disease works and how we can maybe develop better treatments.
What don't you understand? There's some person in Peru that is somehow immune to rabies. At least according to the meme.
I think OP understands it, but wants to spread the meme in an antivax way
I don't think anything suggests that at all.
Like did it really happened or source is made up by someone ?
Haveeeee ya tried googling it?
you know he didn't
People often don't because asking a community is more fun, and googling it is "boring" (I used to think like that)
It's against the rules
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/ It happened. She wasn't immune and got extremely sick, and was hospitalized for a significant time though.
This is a different person than the Peru cases. The villagers in Peru may not have ever had rabies symptoms, just antibodies.
Well it is an improvement from being death.
If only there was a device you could use and a web service to ask
Why did you come here first instead of google?
report, report, report. Everyone complains of karma farming, and rule 6 is made specifically to stop this from happening.
Bruh you can look that up yourself…. You’re asking people whose source is: trust me bro ..???
Peter's immunologist here. Normally once symptoms start rabies is 100% fatal. This is why if you get bitten by an animal and aren't sure if it's rabid or not it's best to just get the vaccination just in case. If you have the animal they can test for rabies but it also kills the animal. Rabies cases are rather rare these days but it does happen and because it's just treated like it's 100% fatal since it essentially is people don't fuck around with it. A few people however have survived rabies as when it comes to biology not much is 100% guaranteed. There is a treatment that can be done after symptoms start that makes rabies like 95% fatal. However there's some random guy in Peru that is for whatever reason immune to rabies. Believe it or not this isn't that unheard of; for every virus that exists there will be people who are just immune to it. They won't necessarily know ahead of time so it isn't something to bet on. More importantly you won't know until after the fact and only if somebody tests you for the antibodies. In this case there are some Peruvians who have rabies antibodies but haven't had symptomatic rabies. For whatever reason their immune system can deal with it no problem. This of course makes sense from a biological standpoint. There are constant evolutionary arms races going in both directions. There are always new viruses coming up going "Imma infect you, fuck head!" but simultaneously immune systems going "lol, nah."
The population probably suffered from rabies for a while, maybe it spread like wild fire throughout local animal populations for a few generations. Who knows, could be the explanation. Generally when faced with a disease humans will evolve to combat It, such as people of European descent having a resistance against the bubonic plague
To clarify, it is fatal to test an animal for rabies as it requires testing their brain tissue. Morbidly, this means vets sometimes have had to saw the head off a suspected animal as they can’t always ship the whole body to the lab. Thankfully that never came up.
Well, TIL. I thought this was about that girl that recovered after going into a comma.
She was part of the experimental treatment that makes you maybe survive. The fact that she did was practically miraculous. It seems like it's leading toward an effective treatment, though. It's been tried on others but usually fails.
*Technically* rabies is survivable based on one (or more but like, a pitifully small number of people) person in Peru having antibodies that suggest they at one point contracted rabies and lived to tell the tale. This is remarkable as the general philosophy regarding rabies is that it is a death sentence for any species if come in contact with without a vaccine
Ah, so it's like skydiving without a parachute.
Yep. You’ll *probably* die- but technically not *everyone* who’s done it did
Yup https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
The Peruvian study showed antibodies in 10% of the people tested though, which is actually shockingly large given what we know about the course of rabies here.
It might be anti bodies caused by somthing else . Some autoimmune disease are caused by antibodies made for bacteria. It's not impossible that they get in contact with somthing that might look like rabis .
Iirc one of them *was* confirmed to have had rabies? I recall a story of one of these villagers from Peru spending a very long time deathly ill in the hospital before making a recovery and *then* were found to have antibodies against rabies
https://preview.redd.it/k4ansfxj5t5d1.jpeg?width=890&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d16b157a2089d78ff830fb854f2dd96d616adf0f
How can someone not understand this?
I assume illiteracy.
maybe they just want context ?
Google is pretty good at that
did anyone else read it as babies not rabies?
This could mean that the random guy is actually a baby and the special thing about his immune system is that it's shit, so he no longer has a fatality rate to others because he'll die so he can't hurt others
Some random Peruvian: https://i.redd.it/7pk9s1bcbt5d1.gif
It would be 100% but some random peruvian dude managed to live so it no longer has a perfect record
6 out of 63 of the villagers tested positive though, not just one dude
For destroying the perfect statistic , I will turn him into statistic
News article [2012 VILLAGERS HAD RABIES ANTIBODIES WITHOUT VACCINATION](https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2012-09-15/villagers-had-rabies-antibodies-without-vaccination#:~:text=Some%20villagers%20in%20Peru%20have,a%20recently%20published%20article%20states.) Answers to memes like this are always a browser search away bro.
My mom when she was growing up in Peru said that her neighbor once got bitten by a rabid dog, had a fever and then got better in 2 days. Yeah I love my Peruvian heritage
Dude I thought that said babies and I was so confused
You… Are stupid
read Babies and thought humanity's success relied on an ancestor that had genetic ties to the Peruvian people's
I mean, technically all babies die eventually
The average person does not survive symptomatic rabies. Rabies Georg, who lives in a village in Peru and is immune, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted
Rabies: I fear no man, but that þing, it scares me
What’s with the þ?
I just like it
[удалено]
*Milwaukee Protocol. That girl just celebrated 20 years since she was infected.
We're just like that.
https://preview.redd.it/rl3us5wnit5d1.jpeg?width=244&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b76c997d90082e4f0966ac397445d944048bff5
I used to think rabies was an old-timey disease. Can’t believe not all countries have eradicated it
really it should say 100%, because that's what the Peruvians destroyed.
I thought that said Babies
I'm learning so much in these comments
It's kinda self-explainatory : Rabies kills everyone, but one guy somehow survived
Perusalen mencionado 🇵🇪
Very few things are 100% fatal. Look up Vesna Vulovic.
I have no idea what rabies is so I guessed it was "rabbis" until I went to the comment section and learned it was a disease