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!
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I went on a rabies deep-dive many years ago and was interested to read this:
[https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0007933](https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0007933)
(preface, I am not a doctor or a scientist)
Essentially, while yes, rabies is EXTREMELY deadly, and every exposure should be treated as a life-or-death situation with post-exposure prophylaxes given to even suspected bites/scratches from wild animals… the 100% fatality in untreated people might not be quite accurate.
Aside from the few Milwaukee protocol survivors (between 5 and 18 depending on who you read), untreated rabies has been considered to be 100% fatal in unvaccinated humans.
This study, however, seems to suggest that some seriological studies of people in-rabies areas, like some places in Africa and India, seem to show rabies antibodies despite never having been sick with rabies, or having been vaccinated. This means they encountered the virus in the wild, were exposed, and it never became clinically relevant, and certainly not fatal.
These might have been glancing blows, where only the tiniest amount of rabies made it into the body, and somehow, the immune system managed to take it out before it migrate through nerves.
Alternately, these people may have been ill at some point in their life with an unknown infection, which while having cleared up, WAS rabies, and they never knew it.
That said, rabies is likely about as close to 100% fatal as any disease can get, so… if you are bitten/scratched by an unknown mammal, please immediately go to the hospital for post-exposure prophylaxis. The sooner the treatment is given, the better your odds. And the odds for treated individuals ARE GOOD! like 100% good… Granted some of it has to do with the location of the bite, etc… a bite directly into the spinal cord, near the brain, etc, might not leave enough time for treatment but that is absurdly rare, and as far as I know, no one treated within 24 hours of an exposure has died of rabies.
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