If we can treat it before symptoms what different after symptoms start showing?
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The difference is where the virus is at the time.
The blood vessels in your brain have a special lining called the blood-brain barrier. It’s there to protect your brain by blocking almost anything from leaving the blood stream and entering the brain except very specific small things like oxygen and water, which the brain needs. As a result, it is VERY hard to get any medicine into the brain itself, since the blood-brain barrier blocks nearly everything. But, **the rabies virus can cross the blood-brain barrier, and it’s only once the brain is infected that symptoms begin.**
So when you get bitten by a rabid animal, the rabies virus is at the wound site, then in the tissue around the wound site, then in the blood near there. At that point, there are no symptoms. It can be treated then, because the antiviral medicine can be injected at the wound site and into the blood stream and reach where the rabies is and kill it.
If left untreated, the rabies virus crosses the barrier into your brain and begins attacking it. That’s what causes the symptoms. But by then it’s too late, because the antiviral medicines can’t cross the blood-brain barrier to where the rabies is living at that point.
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