Make Rabies Great Again
By Popper's Ghost
In the closing days of the 2024 election, a new controversy arose and stoked the anger of the alt-right cesspit.
The tragic death of P’Nut the squirrel.
Just recently, even Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch[1] opined that perhaps the death of P’Nut was an example of government overreach.
This idea should frighten everyone..
Many, many states have laws on the books about possession of wild animals. Those states as well have laws about when an animal which could carry rabies bites someone, and there is no record of that animal being vaccinated, then that animal must be put down. The animal is euthanized so its brain can be examined for signs of the virus.
Rabies is nearly 100% fatal, and the few that have been saved with experimental drug treatments suffer life long disability as rabies has already damaged the brain.[2] There is a short window of time during which the vaccine can be given to prevent progression of the illness.
The laws by and large were passed in response to the effort of stamping out rabies. These days you hardly ever hear about it because it has become so rare in the west. But when I was kid we still got instruction in school about rabid animals and what to do.
So it may be that soon laws originally passed to combat rabies may be victims of their own success. We no longer experience the problem these laws were passed to avoid. So they are seen as useless, but they are an important safety link in the chain.
This video gives a good overview of the controversy, and why euthanasia was the proper outcome:
Basically as soon as an animal with no vaccination record bites someone, its fate is sealed. There may be, on a state by state basis, an exemption for when the victim has been vaccinated and the animal is quarantined to check for symptoms. But the rabies vaccine is expensive ( American Healthcare! ) and requires multiple doses. So the onus is not on the victim, it is on the animal owner to show the animal is safe. As it SHOULD be.
Of course, the right in the usual fashion can’t conceive of anything until it happens to them.
Climate Change? They won’t care till the power goes out in a Florida and reams of GOP voters die in a heat wave. Or, as is happening now, no one can get home insurance as insurers flee the state.
The War on Drugs? Purely hypothetical till white families were getting locked up for having too many vicodin pills. Suddenly “criminals” became “victims” once their skin color was light enough.
Rabies? We will probably see these laws repealed until some white grandpa goes on TV about how his precious granddaughter was bit by a rabid raccoon, and now she’s tied to the hospital bed, waiting to die while she flails around like a zombie from 28 days later. The rage virus exists, its called RABIES.
Go on youtube and search for “rabies victim”[3]. Lots of kids, and adults, from poorer countries. All of those people are dead, they just don’t know it yet[4]…
This is what Gorsuch, and the GOP wants to bring back, in the name of “freedom”.
I am reminded of the DoD and the long story of the Adenovirus vaccine, which was a victim of its own success.[5]
In his 1958 review, Hilleman described adenoviruses as a major cause of illness at military training posts. At that time, up to 90 per cent of all hospital admissions for acute respiratory illness in military recruit camps during winter months were possible adenovirus cases.[6]
During WW2, adenovirus outbreaks regularly delayed deployments of fresh troops from bootcamp for several weeks. The adenovirus causes a severe cold, almost flu-like, requiring a week or more to recuperate. Serotypes 4 and 7, covered by the vaccine, could also cause ARD[7], which can permanently damage the lungs or even kill.
By Korea, the US government had developed an adenovirus vaccine, and the outbreaks were under better control.
In the early 90s, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was the last manufacturer of the vaccine. The equipment was outdated, and the product really only had one customer. Wyeth requested the DoD help defray some of the costs for the necessary upgrades.
Apparently as part of a cost cutting move, and because mass adenovirus outbreaks had NOT been a problem for several decades[8], it was decided to let manufacturing lapse and use up the last stocks
Wyeth ceased production in 1994, and the last stocks were used up by 1999.
After 1999 the outbreaks started again. A few years later, the US entered its “War on Terror” phase. Adenovirus outbreaks again began delaying deployments for weeks.
So the government was forced to find a new vaccine and supplier, taking over a decade (2011) to reach production, and paying modern Big Pharma markups.
https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-justices-discuss-peanut-squirrels-death-1986337#:~:text=Addressing%20the%20audience,Peanut%20the%20squirrel.%22 ↩
You can see photos here: https://phil.cdc.gov/details.aspx?pid=6113 ↩
While some argue the unease the uncanny-valley elicits in humans might have evolved in response to a unknown, possibly hominid predator (us-but-not-us), my theory is that it is possibly an evolutionary survival response to rabies victims. ↩
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264410X12017999?via%3Dihub ↩
Acute Respiratory Disorder, also a common outcome of Covid-19 infection. ↩
I wonder why there hadn’t been any big outbreaks for decades… ↩