Colorado Woman Rescues Baby Raccoon, Exposes 21 People To Rabies

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A woman from Weld County in Colorado inadvertently exposed 21 people to rabies after she rescued a baby raccoon she found in her property. The incident is considered the largest rabies exposure case in the county.

On July 2, Weld County officials announced of a wildlife rescue attempt that ended up exposing a large number of people to rabies. Apparently, a woman found and rescued an abandoned baby raccoon in her property and decided to take it to her home.

Unfortunately, the baby raccoon eventually tested positive for rabies, but not before being exposed to 21 people in total. All the individuals who were exposed are receiving post-exposure treatments, which includes one dose of immune globulin and four doses of the anti-rabies vaccine to be given over a 14-day period.

According to the Executive Director of the Weld County Health Department, Mark E. Wallace, MD, MPH, this year has seen a high number of rabies exposure in animals, which is why the public is advised not to go near or touch wild animals. The same advice was given after a woman touched a dead rabid bat with her bare hands just last June. She was also given the post-exposure treatments.

“We’re not just seeing typical skunk or bat rabies this year. We’re concerned about the growing number of cases among other animals such as raccoons and cat,” said Wallace.

It is because of this so-called spillover that increases the risk of human rabies infection, especially in the summer, when rabies cases are more common than in other seasons. As the disease may affect all mammals, including humans, it is important to keep family members as well as pets protected from wild animal encounters and to keep pets’ rabies vaccinations up to date.

The county health department advises the public to not feed, touch, or handle wild animals and to leave baby animals alone even if they appear orphaned, as they are very often not. In fact, in many cases, the baby animal’s parent will return even hours later but may refuse to do so because people are too near. Despite appearances, the baby animals will still survive better if in its natural habitat.

“If you see a baby raccoon that appears to have lost its mother, your first reaction is to pick it up and help it. However, by touching, feeding, or rescuing a wild animal, you may do more harm than good,” said Wallace.

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SvenTropics on July 6th, 2018 at 20:04 UTC »

Some facts on Rabies:

Most mammals can contract it, and virtually all will die from it. (Possums being a notable exception) Incubation is typically a month, but it can be as long as a year. This is the point where you get infected to when you start having symptoms. This is why we have a treatment for it. It takes your body at least a couple of weeks after exposure to the vaccine to develop sufficient levels of antibodies to be protected, but the incubation is so long that you have plenty of time. The main symptom is a swelling of the brain that causes all kinds of problems including behavioral changes. A lot of people get infected because animals that would otherwise avoid people act tame and want to interact. Pet dogs might bite their owners. etc... The main vector for transmission is saliva to blood. It's not airborne. It's not easy to catch. It's not considered a disease that's contagious within people (person to person transmission), but it's certainly possible. Cases of human infection are insanely rare in the USA now. This is due to widespread vaccinations of domestic and wild animals. The vaccine is 100% effective. Given before symptoms develop, it has never failed. Ever. Not a single person who got the vaccine ever came down with the disease. Once you get symptoms, the vaccine is useless. It used to be 100% fatal, but they developed the Milwaukee protocol on a hunch, and the first person to ever survive rabies is an adult woman today. They basically put you in a coma for a month and let the disease run its course. If they stop your brain from swelling, you don't die. This protocol is only about 50% effective and people who survive it always suffer brain damage. If you think you might be at high risk of being infected (like you work with bats), you can get a pre-exposure vaccine. It's the same vaccine. Nobody who has ever gotten this has gotten rabies. So, it's possible that you are 100% immune for life after a course of the vaccine, but they will still administer more of it if you get exposed. The data on how little works or how long the vaccine lasts is pretty much non-existent because to experiment with this would be highly unethical, and it's a very rare disease in humans. They have a nuclear option that works, and that's what they do. It's just shots in the arm now, and it's grown in a very similar way that they grow flu vaccines. The old shots in the belly thing hasn't been used in a LONG time.

revankillsmalak on July 6th, 2018 at 18:28 UTC »

Damnit Meredith!!

Cockwombles on July 6th, 2018 at 17:39 UTC »

How so many? The article doesn’t say but wow. Rabies is not a joke.