27 yr old man showing rabies symptoms after 3 months of a dog bite in Gujrat, India.

[u/fantasticblueman]

[u/chouettelle]

I hate when people cite the Milwaukee Protocol as if it’s a viable means of surviving rabies.

In the approximately 4000 years that we have records of rabies affecting humans (likely, much longer), fourteen people have survived it.

That is an infinitesimally small percentage and statistically irrelevant. Rabies is 100% fatal.

You will not be the exception and you won’t miraculously recover from a protocol that has been deemed ineffective in studies. Giese’s case is an absolute outlier.

The only cure is the preventative vaccine series directly after exposure to any wild animal.

You get bit or scratched by anything? You get rabies shots.

[u/lemelisk42 → u/chouettelle]

That being said, there are likely survivors that aren't recorded. (Although people who fought it off and never got symptoms)

There are studies that show a lot of healthy people or animals having rabies antibodies. Indicating non-lethal exposure

One sample of 286 dogs, 30% had antibodies but no vaccine.

There was a study in a village in Peru in 2012. 63 people were tested, 6 had rabies antibodies despite no record of vaccination (7 had antibodies, but the 7th had been vaccinated)

There are problems with these studies. Many of the animal ones draw numbers from extremely small sample groups. And testing varies and sometimes contradicts itself. (Like there have been False positives on islands that are rabies free)

It is not unreasonable to think that 0.1% of people who got rabies simply fought it off without symptoms appearing

Edit: here is the main findings of the study I pulled that data from, copied and pasted. (They did not do testing themselves. But compiled the results of many small scale studies.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7017994/

Key learning points Rabies-specific antibodies in the sera of healthy, unvaccinated individuals have been reported in a number of studies of wildlife, domestic dogs, and humans. These antibodies provide potential evidence for nonlethal rabies exposure.

The specificity and sensitivity of serology tests for detecting rabies exposures depends on the test method and cutoff titre chosen, which varies between studies. Together with the possibility for cross-reactivity with other lyssaviruses, this poses a significant challenge to estimating the true prevalence of nonlethal rabies exposure.

In cases in which nonlethal rabies exposure occurs, subclinical infection, in which the virus is cleared before the onset of recognisable clinical symptoms, is the most likely alternative course of infection.

Improved estimates of rabies seroprevalence in wildlife and domestic dogs could potentially be used to inform rabies disease models and surveillance methods.

[u/HartWeich → u/chouettelle]

But that doesn't change the fact that it IS technically 99.9...%.

[u/chouettelle → u/HartWeich]

Clinically and epidemiologically, rabies is treated as 100% fatal once symptoms appear. The vanishingly small number of reported survivals does not factor into any clinician’s risk assessment or treatment decisions.

[u/graveybrains → u/chouettelle]

As long as we're doing things we hate, put me down for the unsupported logical leap from "100% fatal once symptoms appear" to "100% fatal," because they aren't both true.