Why is it so hard to cure rabies?
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Medicine still struggles with ‘curing” viruses directly. Our big trick is usually to do something immune system related and then have that deal with it. We have a rabies vaccine but once you have it we don’t have tons to actually fight the virus.
The other big thing is the way you deal with a bad virus is make the person survive it. If you have a lung virus you put the person on oxygen until the virus passes and the lungs heal, if someone has a digestive virus you feed them through a tube or IV until their digestive system heals. Etc. Even if a virus destroyed your whole heart you might get a heart transplant. But rabies kills your nerves and your brain. We could keep someone with rabies on a machine as long as we wanted, but what are we gonna do? Wait until their whole brain grows back? It breaks too much irreplaceable stuff too fast to ever recover at all once it’s done damage.
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