Our dogs and cats get yearly rabies shots, where I live its free and the government even sets up a mobile clinic in our neighborhood. One shot lasts them a year and doesn’t seem to have any negative side effects. Why can’t humans get a similar shot when we go in for our flu shot?
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It’s a cost-benefit issue.
There IS a rabies vaccine for people, but it isn’t cheap (higher quality standards, different formulation and all), and there are some risks as with any vaccine, so the only time people get it is if there’s a significant risk.
In the U.S., animal reservoirs like dogs are well-controlled (stray dog population is heavily curtailed and most places require dogs and sometimes cats to be vaccinated regularly), so the risk to a given individual is vanishingly low.
The people who do get the shot are:
* People who get it as part of Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) because there’s reason to suspect they were exposed, like a bat encounter, or a dog bite from a possibly infected dog (or a dog that cannot be located for quarantine).
* People who work in high-exposure professions like animal control officers and veterinarians.
* People who plan to travel abroad to parts of the world where rabies is more common and/or PEP may not be quickly available (India in particular, but also a number of other places in Asia and Africa. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_rabies#Asia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_rabies#Asia))
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