I read a news story about a guy who died from rabies after receiving a kidney transplant. Although nobody was aware when he died, the donor of the kidney had contracted rabies after being scratched by a skunk several weeks before he died and his organs were harvested.
I got curious about how the donor got scratched by the skunk, but instead only found this article from August, which informed me that the U.S. has a rabies outbreak, and has more deaths from rabies in the last year than several previous years…
Not sure if people were already talking about this outbreak, and I just missed it? It’s been a bit of a weird year, and there’s been a lot of crazy shit to keep up with.
Anyway, this is also how I ended up reading the sentence informing me some people are worried dogs are getting autism from vaccines.
Outbreaks of rabies seem to be rising across the U.S., CDC surveillance shows
That’s generally how it works if your dog or cat (or squirrel) bites someone. Unless you can provide proof of a current vaccination, the animal has to get tested for rabies. This involves getting a sample of brain tissue. For pet owners that seems excessive, but for someone who has seen a rabies infection first-hand, there is no animal valuable enough to skip that test