Just saw a video about rabies having 100% kill rate, peaked my interest.
Why is rabies such a horrible thing and what does it actually do to be able to kill you without an actual cure etc?
EDIT: I didn’t expect so many responses to this, thank you to everyone who answered!
In: 1482
It’s literally the closest thing to a real zombie virus. It travels via the nervous system and thus is able to evade your immune system for a very long time. As it travels, it kills off nerve cells until it eventually reaches your brain starting usually at the brain stem. The first symptoms are tingling, numbness, and lack of fine motor control starting at the area of entry. Then as it travels to and begins destroying your brain stem, you start loosing basic motor control through your whole body. As the condition slowly progresses you get more and more brain damage from the bottom up. This starts of as irritability (why some animals bite), memory loss, instinct loss (why some animals lose their fear of humans during the process), insomnia, and loss of motor control in areas such as your throat which makes you choke on water. This is where the fear of drinking water comes from.
It’s incurable at this stage and what damage has been done cannot be undone. Once you start feeling the first symptoms then you have a 99.9% chance of an agonizing death. The first symptoms can take upwards of MONTHS to show up. So if you suspect you have been bitten or scratched by an infected animal you must seek treatment ASAP.
Modern treatment consists of a protocol. You are given multiple vaccines in stages every few months, and your first visit you will also be given anti-bodies injected into the area where you were bitten or scratched which gives your body a head start for the vaccine to take effect. This treatment is 99% effective from what I’ve read, but that’s ONLY if you start treatment within the WEEK of exposure.
Latest Answers