3 ms·

> good chance you come away with rabies. Naw, they've tested them in Toronto: none had rabbies since 1997. A sick raccoon usually has distemper, which you have

> good chance you come away with rabies. Naw, they've tested them in Toronto: none had rabbies since 1997. A sick raccoon usually has distemper, which you have nothing to worry about as a human. It's the 2-3% of bats with rabies you have to worry about. https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care/health-programs-advice/rabies-prevention-and-control/rabies-in-animals/ https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care... > Try to get between a raccoon and it's trash Why would I do that?

steve_adams_86 4y ago
I’m so torn on the bats thing. Many people have spent countless hours exposed to them and never gotten sick, and very few people get rabies from bats at all, so the risk appears very low. I suppose the people around them the most follow certain safety precautions that regular people don’t. Although cases are exceedingly rare (1-3 per year in the USA I think?), evidently that shoots up occasionally: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0106-human-rabies.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0106-human-rabies.h... That link does make 5 cases up from 0 seem like a big deal, but… A chunk of that time was during quarantine time, and dropping from 1-3 to 0 isn’t so profound (though it’s far preferable, of course). M In any case, I wouldn’t wish rabies on anyone. I suppose I just wish we were less afraid of bats and able to help them flourish. Apart from rabies, they are incredible animals that do a lot of good for their ecosystems.
- ak217 4y ago
  Bats are uniquely dangerous to all other mammals because of how their immune system is different (due to the unique metabolic requirements of flight, they have evolved a system which allows viruses to remain active in the body instead of fully suppressing them). We knew this before COVID-19, COVID-19 is not the last bat-borne viral disease that will be a problem, and it is no coincidence that it came from bats. Bats are amazing but the way to let them flourish is to leave them alone and maximize conservation. Humans should not be commingling with bats (or even researching them as nonchalantly as we have been) until we get MUCH better at biomedical engineering and immunotherapy.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    That’s fascinating. I’m surprised I’d never heard that little detail about bats before. Or maybe I did, but didn’t realize the significance of it and it didn’t fully register. I agree about staying away from bats. I mean, if there’s a risk of rabies at all, I don’t want to go near a single one of them. But like you say, letting them be and conserving (or even restoring) their habitats would go a long way in supporting them. Ideally there would be no human interaction element. I suppose people worry that if bats flourish, we will encounter them more often. I’m not sure how likely that is at various scales. Say their populations double, would we see twice as many bats and see a doubling of rabies cases? I’m not sure.
22289d 4y ago
> Why would I do that? Because you're trying to throw away your own trash, in my case. I don't even bother taking it out at night anymore, there are raccoons there half the time. And they do not respond well to me getting anywhere near that trash can.
grumple 4y ago
There have been a few rabies cases in Philly this year. [An attack in nearby Radnor by a racoon](https://6abc.com/raccoon-attack-radnor-pa-the-willows-devon-pennsylvania/12079834/ https://6abc.com/raccoon-attack-radnor-pa-the-willows-devon-...). [A rabid cat was found as well](https://philadelphiaweekly.com/rabies-in-philadelphia-stray-cat-infected-in-brewerytown-health-dept-urges-vaccinations-vigilance/ https://philadelphiaweekly.com/rabies-in-philadelphia-stray-...). It happens, and I generally see more racoons and cats than bats in the city.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

I’m so torn on the bats thing. Many people have spent countless hours exposed to them and never gotten sick, and very few people get rabies from bats at all, so the risk appears very low. I suppose the people around them the most follow certain safety precautions that regular people don’t. Although cases are exceedingly rare (1-3 per year in the USA I think?), evidently that shoots up occasionally: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0106-human-rabies.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0106-human-rabies.h... That link does make 5 cases up from 0 seem like a big deal, but… A chunk of that time was during quarantine time, and dropping from 1-3 to 0 isn’t so profound (though it’s far preferable, of course). M In any case, I wouldn’t wish rabies on anyone. I suppose I just wish we were less afraid of bats and able to help them flourish. Apart from rabies, they are incredible animals that do a lot of good for their ecosystems.

ak217 4y ago
Bats are uniquely dangerous to all other mammals because of how their immune system is different (due to the unique metabolic requirements of flight, they have evolved a system which allows viruses to remain active in the body instead of fully suppressing them). We knew this before COVID-19, COVID-19 is not the last bat-borne viral disease that will be a problem, and it is no coincidence that it came from bats. Bats are amazing but the way to let them flourish is to leave them alone and maximize conservation. Humans should not be commingling with bats (or even researching them as nonchalantly as we have been) until we get MUCH better at biomedical engineering and immunotherapy.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  That’s fascinating. I’m surprised I’d never heard that little detail about bats before. Or maybe I did, but didn’t realize the significance of it and it didn’t fully register. I agree about staying away from bats. I mean, if there’s a risk of rabies at all, I don’t want to go near a single one of them. But like you say, letting them be and conserving (or even restoring) their habitats would go a long way in supporting them. Ideally there would be no human interaction element. I suppose people worry that if bats flourish, we will encounter them more often. I’m not sure how likely that is at various scales. Say their populations double, would we see twice as many bats and see a doubling of rabies cases? I’m not sure.

22289d 4y ago

> Why would I do that? Because you're trying to throw away your own trash, in my case. I don't even bother taking it out at night anymore, there are raccoons there half the time. And they do not respond well to me getting anywhere near that trash can.

grumple 4y ago

There have been a few rabies cases in Philly this year. [An attack in nearby Radnor by a racoon](https://6abc.com/raccoon-attack-radnor-pa-the-willows-devon-pennsylvania/12079834/ https://6abc.com/raccoon-attack-radnor-pa-the-willows-devon-...). [A rabid cat was found as well](https://philadelphiaweekly.com/rabies-in-philadelphia-stray-cat-infected-in-brewerytown-health-dept-urges-vaccinations-vigilance/ https://philadelphiaweekly.com/rabies-in-philadelphia-stray-...). It happens, and I generally see more racoons and cats than bats in the city.