There is a saying, I don’t know if you have heard of it: cauliflower is yellow, mad dogs are crazy.
What does it mean? In fact, what is said is that when winter ends and spring comes, this time is the estrus period of small animals such as cats and dogs.
I have finally taken off my cotton-padded clothes. Many people choose to go out to play at this time, and they are likely to encounter these small animals. Accidentally got bitten, what should I do?
Crazy may not be dogs, but people!
Rabies has a 99.99% fatality rate. If you want to joke about it, you should be the loser.
Why is rabies so dangerous?
01 Direct damage to nerves
Don’t underestimate the rabies virus, it’s a neurotropic virus. What about neurotropic viruses? Where is the mighty place?
Rabies virus does not use blood circulation to harm the human body. Instead, it directly attacks the nerve cells and can spread to the brain and the whole body!
Even the brain is attacked by the virus and eventually collapsed, all biological behaviors naturally controlled by the brain cease. You say it’s not scary?
02 Hidden body for one hit kills
What’s more terrifying is that the rabies virus will hide in the human body, only to kill in one blow. Many people do not experience symptoms until months after infection. Unfortunately, it’s too late.
Because the nature of viruses is to attack our nervous system. If the infection is relatively close to the central nervous system, the “one-shot kill” time is very short, possibly just a day.
If the infection site is far from the central nervous system, the virus will remain dormant in the body, sneaking forward like a march every day until one day it reaches the central nervous system.
Unbeknownst to you, the virus is approaching you along your neural pathways, pressing the countdown to death…
03 bypasses immune defenses
Maybe many people will ask, don’t our bodies have an immune system? Doesn’t it kill the virus that invades our body? Why did you go early?
Unexpectedly, the rabies virus has long expected this, when it invades our nervous system, it secretes interferon. The disturbed immune system cannot identify the enemy in time.
It’s like the rabies virus came to our home and surreptitiously removed all the protective equipment in the house – turn off the lights, pry open the security door, turn off the home alarm, surveillance cameras, etc. Our home was plunged into darkness and nothing was found.
After a while, when we turned on the lights again, I felt the same in my home. In fact, the bad guys have already sneaked into the room!
Who is the lucky one who survived the rabies virus?
Since the fatality rate of rabies virus is as high as 99.99%, who is the lucky one so rare?
There really is such a person! Although he was not vaccinated against rabies, he was lucky to escape from death.
In the United States 18 years ago, an ordinary high school student picked up a bat on the side of the road and developed symptoms a month after being bitten by it.
In order to save him, the doctor came up with a method: The high school boy’s brain was put into a state of suspended animation so that the nerves could not transmit information, and the immune system could recover to kill the virus.
Can this trick fool the rabies virus? Fortunately, the doctor’s method worked! After a month, the high school boy’s immune system began to slowly recover and was ready to start killing the virus.
After 6 days, the virus is completely removed from the body.
He wasn’t the only lucky one, either. Another 10 patients who used this method together became the 0.01% who escaped death.
So why isn’t this approach popularized? What about saving the remaining 99.99%?
This is because, even with this type of treatment, which has a proven track record of success, the cure rate is very low. No one can guarantee that when the body is injected with anesthesia drugs to prompt the brain to “suspended death”, the virus has not escaped at all.
So, if you want to save your life, you can only rely on the rabies vaccine!
Dr.X Says
One thing to remind everyone. It’s not that cats and dogs bite people to get rabies. This is just a general term. In fact, rabbits, pigs, horses, raccoons and other warm-blooded animals can be infected with rabies virus. So, don’t be careless!
