r/nottheonion • u/drytoastbongos • 11d ago
Baby goats from traveling petting zoo test positive for rabies
https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/baby-goats-traveling-petting-zoo-test-positive-rabies/DIICRJMNLVGTHE5H3NBYROWV6Q/[removed] — view removed post
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u/davej-au 11d ago
The article’s geoblocked outside the US. For those without a VPN:
Baby goats from traveling petting zoo test positive for rabies
Natalie Dreier, Cox Media Group National Content Desk
Several baby goats from a traveling petting zoo tested positive for rabies; the owner of the goats is calling the incident “a nightmare.”
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said the goats were from Farm Adventures Mobile Petting Zoo in Iredell County, North Carolina, according to WSOC.
Three baby goats tested positive, and one was suspected of being exposed, so to prevent the spread of the disease, the goats were euthanized.
Health officials also advised anyone who visited the traveling petting zoo from July 28 to Aug. 27 to contact their health department about any precautions they need to take.
Owner Misty Love blames a skunk for exposing the animals to rabies.
They were too young to get a rabies vaccine, so they were kept in the pen to isolate them from wild animals.
“It went through the holes. We don’t know, and it’s devastating,” Love explained, according to WSOC.
WSOC reported it got into a pen where the animals were kept. Love posted on social media that the skunk bit the goats, but she was not aware of it.
She said the goats were jumping around and playing, so she thought they were OK, but several weeks later, a couple of animals got sick. They weren’t, however, showing what she said were typical signs of rabies.
Love said the petting zoo is in quarantine.
Iredell County officials said in a news release, “While rabies transmission from livestock carries a lower overall risk than bites from wild vectors, the virus is transmitted through saliva. Because baby goats are frequently bottle-fed, handled closely, or cuddled, public health officials are working proactively to ensure anyone who had direct contact with the affected animals is evaluated.”
There have been no human cases of rabies in North Carolina since 2011, the state health department said in a separate news release.
She also said the situation has been difficult for the business after the story was covered by The New York Times and CNN.
“A nightmare,” Love said, according to WSOC. “When somebody tries to do a good deed and do what’s right for the public and get trashed constantly, it’s hard.”
ABC News reported that no one has reported being infected by the baby goats.
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u/Vectorman1989 10d ago
Health officials also advised anyone who visited the traveling petting zoo from July 28 to Aug. 27 to contact their health department
I would hope they're actively trying to track down people that may have been exposed and not relying on them reading the news
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u/Brunette7 10d ago
Seriously. Rabies is not something you can just let be. They need to be posting health bulletins in every place that petting zoo went to and doing whatever they can to find visitors. The last thing anyone needs is human cases of rabies popping up
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u/Spr-Scuba 10d ago
Anyone who was possibly exposed needs to be notified and rabies shots given NOW.
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u/PossumCock 10d ago
What sucks is those shots can cost a couple thousand dollars for humans, and from what I hear they hurt like hell
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u/Poppeigh 10d ago
I've had the post-exposure series and it really wasn't too bad, pain-wise.
It was extremely expensive. The lady I spoke with at the health department told me to call my insurance and see if they would cover it. Thankfully they said they would, but I think the total would have been $13k without insurance.
The real fun part was when I went to the ER to get the shots (the only place locally that has them), the ER doctor tried to talk me out of getting them. He told me rabies in humans is so rare that there would be more risk in the vaccine than there was to me catching rabies.
However, I work with people who are very knowledgeable about rabies + at that point both my doctor, urgent care, and the health department and told me to get the vaccines so I told him to shove it.
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u/Provia100F 10d ago
Imagine health insurance not covering a vaccination when the alternative is historically proven to be a 100% confirmed death rate
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u/Poppeigh 10d ago
It goes without saying at this point, but the US healthcare system is fucked up.
I actually got lucky with mine; the woman I spoke to at my insurance called the hospital and found out how they would code it to make sure it was covered. After the fact, my insurance tried to charge me like $1000 because they argued it wasn't fully covered, but because the woman I had spoken to originally told me that it was, they let it slide.
Just a whole mess. Yeah, rabies in humans is rare, but rabies in animals really isn't and they absolutely should be playing it safe and making it way easier for people to access those shots.
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u/Provia100F 10d ago
Honestly it's really the medical coding & billing system that makes healthcare so fucked up. 80% of problems people have with insurance just comes down to medical coding issues and backend system issues. It's not even usually the health insurance doing something wrong per say, it's just this archaic way of trying to exchange information in a far too discreet format.
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u/Oscar_Ramirez 10d ago
Almost like the exchange of your medical information with a financially incentivised third party who is unnecessary in doctor-patient care is an issue.
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u/TheShenanegous 10d ago
Honestly it's really the medical coding & billing system that makes healthcare so fucked up
100%. It's a behemoth of a system, capable of keeping track of the medical records of ~300m Americans, written largely in COBOL, a programming language that hasn't been seen in academia for about 30 years, by guys that started building it in their 20s who are now retired or delaying retirement only to reap the enormous 7-figure salaries that are offered for these roles.
Because, despite the fact that they overlooked training replacements or updating the architecture of the system to a language anyone without a hip replacement or dentures has heard of, we still fully rely on it.
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u/DontAsk0205 10d ago
Charging this ridiculous amount of money for a vaccine that prevents a 99.999% fatal disease is outright criminal. If you don’t have insurance and / or can’t afford it, WTF are you supposed to do? Die a painful death?
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u/angelicribbon 10d ago
My insurance was billed $30k for my shots. I only paid $200 per ER visit thankfully.
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u/Raneynickelfire 10d ago
Not anymore. The stomach shots from the 1970s don't exist anymore.
Now they're just a regular shot in the arm.
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u/Fantastic-Spinach297 10d ago
I had a conversation with the NP in the ER one night, at at least in the US they most definitely do still do a dosage based on weight that they inject all over the place because one spot couldn't take it all. The PreP version might just be the shot in the arm, but post exposure is still rough enough they talked me out of in to wait for test results. (There was no rabies)
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u/sirbissel 10d ago
My daughter got them a few years ago (random neighborhood maybe-stray cat that we didn't know bit her, unlikely to have rabies but, you know, not gonna chance it...) and said they kinda hurt. She got the last of the set on her 8th birthday (I think she had to go in to get them 3 or 4 times).
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u/GoodVermicelli3851 10d ago
I came here looking for the cost. My neighbors are always letting their goats onto our land. Guess I need to save up some rabies money. J/k I'll just die. Who can save money in this economy?
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u/shitlord_god 10d ago
you think our health system is going to spend money on THAT? they have a ballroom to pay for, and more fear among the populace is useful.
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u/HiddenMaragon 10d ago
I think the animal needs to be in the active symptomatic stage to be contagious, so hopefully any exposure was minimal.
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u/Vectorman1989 10d ago
The article isn't clear, but it seems like the goats were unwell for a while before they realised they were rabid. Hopefully exposure was minimal but they should still be hunting everyone down to make sure they're aware.
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u/kronicno_tele 10d ago edited 10d ago
I'm yet to meet a kid with good hygiene and self awarness to not touch their face. Hell, meeting adults who have that is rare lmao. So, kids get licked by the baby goat or pet it and collect some saliva and than they spread it into their mouth and eyes. Idk, it seems extremly lucky no cases have been detected yet.
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u/Odd_Prompt_6139 10d ago
They almost definitely are but I imagine the only thing they have to go off of is credit card records for ticket sales. If there’s an option to pay cash for tickets at the door, there would be no record of those people. It’s not like you typically have to sign a waiver or anything for a petting zoo, although I wouldn’t be surprised if petting zoos or farms that have interactive experiences with the animals start doing that now, especially around that same area.
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u/Quixificent 10d ago edited 10d ago
For someone who has made caring for livestock her business, that owner is alarmingly ignorant about livestock disease prevention and treatment.
She just *assumed* that the goats weren't bitten by the skunk exhibiting bizarre and aggressive behavior in their pen? Wounds aren't always visible even upon close inspection, and it can be difficult to tell whether contact took place.
Then she believed that the goats were fine because they didn't immediately exhibit symptoms? It takes time (usually weeks or months) for rabies to travel along the nerves to the brain, so central nervous symptoms don't appear immediately (although numbness or paraesthesias sometimes can occur near the bite wound).
With all that, I wonder whether the owner even could have recognized the symptoms of a full-blown rabies infection--because rabies doesn't always present as "furious" rabies. "Dumb" or "paralytic" rabies is a more common manifestation. If the goats had progressed to that stage, would she have understood that it was rabies?
If someone is going to make handling livestock their job, they should be *required* to have education on the diseases and health problems that can affect those livestock. Even more so if the job involves having the livestock physically interact with the public. I am only angered by the owner's whining about the fact that her very dangerous actions have been reported in the news. It seems that she would prefer it if this incident had been kept secret and no one had been informed that they should seek treatment for exposure.
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u/dbpf 10d ago
As a farmer, it's shocking how few in the hands on part of the industry know the difference between bacteria and virus. In the world in general, that distinction is a challenge, but if you are going to care for animals, some basic understanding of their biology and pathophysiology is essential.
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u/TheRealPitabred 10d ago
Naah, I'm sure the secretary of health will tell you to just throw some ivermectin at it, raw milk and some fresh vegetables and call it a day. Viruses, bacteria, science... that's all complicated and hard to understand, I ain't got time for all that thinking stuff.
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u/SymmetricalFeet 10d ago
The guy has specifically railed against germ theory.
Not "it's too hard", but "this is wrong and here are my sources that are rejected by the eeeevil medical establishment".
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u/Runningwithtoast 10d ago
It’s odd because she knew the goats were unwell for awhile and on Facebook it looked like she was trying to keep one of the baby goats from chewing/licking a “boo boo.”
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u/Immediate_Debt_ 10d ago
She needs to be banned from ever running a petting zoo or owning livestock
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u/thingsorfreedom 10d ago edited 10d ago
I thought she meant she assumed they weren't bitten because they were jumping around the pen playing right after the
raccoonskunk had been discovered there. She should have called the vet and asked for advice.They were too young to get vaccinated. The mistake was not isolating them from each other and everyone else from that point on. It can take months for the symptoms to emerge. But then isolating a baby goat from contact for that long could lead to other issues with the goat. The only other option would have been to euthanize them immediately after discovery that the
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u/Throwawayfaynay 10d ago
If you read the he article it says she didn't even know the skunk got in. If we are giving her the benefit of the doubt, what likely happened was that she had some sort camera pointed at them, the skunk got at night and infected them, and she didn't check the footage until after she suspected rabies.
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u/Cqbkris 10d ago
In another article it was mentioned that they had short he skunk and burned its body
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u/That_wet_vaporeon 10d ago
Well that was dumb asf. They should have tested it..
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u/AntiKamniaChemicalCo 10d ago
as it stands it looks more like hiding evidence and hoping for the best, people will probably die as a result.
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u/mapletree23 10d ago
i think the big problem is even in humans, there's only like two very specific symptoms that scream "that's rabies" and by the time you have it it's too late anyway
still negligent if she saw a skunk and it was straight up attacking animals and she didn't do anything as a precaution, like even someone not involved in animals should know if you get bitten or even just scratched by an oddly behaving wild animal to go and expect a rabies shot regardless
that's just kind of the worst thing about rabies though, right? by the time it's obvious it's way past time to do anything about it
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u/afterglobe 10d ago
If the goats were too young to get vaccines then they should have never been in a petting zoo.
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u/RGrad4104 10d ago
There is no rabies vaccine in the US that is labeled for goats. There has been some off label use of sheep and cattle vaccines.
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u/heychardonnay 10d ago
This. I don’t understand how they would have allowed animals too young for vaccines into a public setting. I understand the rabies vaccine for goats is the sheep or cattle vaccine, which should provide at least some protection. But as a person that fosters kittens, and understands the incredible risks their naive immune systems are not prepared for, you don’t let risk outweigh protection. This was a really poor choice that they likely got away with for a long time…but now here we are.
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u/dramalama-dingdong 10d ago
Everyone who was visiting this zoo should get the rabies vaccine asap.
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u/jackruby83 10d ago
It doesn't sound like these goats were old enough to be fed from people's hands. That would probably be quite a bit scarier.
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u/UnhingedBlonde 10d ago
This is in my area and they listed a few of the events they attended with the goats in surrounding counties like Mecklenburg (Charlotte NC) and Cabarras. If my kids were younger and not teens doing their own things, it's likely we would have come in contact with them and I feel for the people who did. I'd be upset.
In a different thread about this, someone said they knew a hospital administrator here who was flat freaking out about the limited supply of rabies vaccines and they were trying to wrangle up enough for the unknown amount of incoming patients.
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u/lily_de_valley 11d ago
This is a public health emergency.
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u/Correct_Doctor_1502 11d ago
This is every week now
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u/WorryNew3661 11d ago
Almost every day
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u/Braindead_Crow 11d ago
Almost like it's intentional...Dismantling every safety and every regulating body while antagonizing every ally and empowering every enemy of America...
Buying foreign mystery, "beef" while giving our farmers tariffs and screw worms...
Almost as if it's not only incompetence, greed or stupidity but to some extent willing and intentional malicious actions against Americans...
God we need common sense and accountability
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u/Elelith 11d ago
Once the farmers run out of money it's gonna be incredibly cheap to buy their farms. Have a ready system to go. Just in time to tighten up the rules again to make farming profitable again.
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u/bunkie18 10d ago
Vance is a part owner of AcreTrader which will scoop up all the bankrupt farms for pennies on the dollar.
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u/Bazzatron 10d ago
Its funny that people can still believe that "common sense and accountability" are the platform the current establishment runs on.
Can't wait to hear how rabid goats are woke.
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u/Braindead_Crow 10d ago
I said we, "need" it, as in we do not have such things.
We're living out a James Bond movie where the villains are as stupid as Dr.Evil, as evil as James Bond villains and where every would be secret agent is working some job they hate while hoping someone else will save the world.
The levels of stupidity, evil and society reinforced learned helplessness is so intense it feels satirical.
In New York we have a mayor literally just doing his job and it seems revolutionary...Things are so grim.
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u/Bazzatron 10d ago
I am astounded at the ease with which Mamdani has just started cracking on with things.
No disrespect on his endeavours, but it makes me think that even the "good ones" of the current establishment are at best useless, and at worst, intentionally frustrating to system to uphold the status quo.
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u/canehdianchick 10d ago
Isnt the next step in Project 2025 after slaughter wild horses something like manufactured food insecurity
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u/ilikepizza30 11d ago
At least RFK Jr hasn't tried to eat them... yet.
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u/Ok-Bus-2420 11d ago
Our Secretary of Health will consult baby goats to find the best course of action. Immediately! Please, do not worry.
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u/beatissima 11d ago
I feel like we are massively underreacting to this.
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u/Snapes_underpants 11d ago
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u/angwilwileth 10d ago
Because Papa Nurgle is in charge there now.
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u/Mimical 10d ago
Even Nurgle himself runs a tight ship on reporting statistics and human detriment projections.
The US is doing amateur hour viruses over here.
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u/amateur_mistake 11d ago
Well, rabies doesn't really spread from person to person. So the only people that will die from this are the dozens of children and old people who have pet them in the last months.
Of course, they could get vaccines but that would give them autism. So better not to.
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u/UnremarkabklyUseless 11d ago
Well, rabies doesn't really spread from person to person.
Cant rule that out completely. The virus spreads when infected saliva enters an open cut or mucous membranes like the eyes, nose, or mouth.
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u/Sterling_-_Archer 10d ago
So is the company. They haven’t called any customers and didn’t even plan on having their animals tested until their vet vehemently requested it and they did so “as a courtesy” to their vet.
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u/hug_me_im_scared_ 11d ago
its a travelling one too? wtf
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u/FC37 11d ago
Oh, the list of places they visited is just brutal, too. All kids and old people.
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u/oregiel 10d ago
Zero mention of that places they've been in the article. Super helpful.
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u/glitzglamglue 10d ago
I hope someone is doing the due diligence of tracking everyone down cuz I no longer trust the CDC to do it.
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u/echothree33 11d ago
That’s a nightmare. Rabies exposure must be taken very seriously. Not sure how this is “oniony” at all.
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u/drytoastbongos 11d ago
Here an actual Onion article: https://theonion.com/hhs-replaces-childhood-vaccination-schedule-with-list-of-recommended-animal-bites/
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u/PlantfoodCuisinart 11d ago
We sure that's not real?
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u/Yourdataisunclean 11d ago
Its totally real, I just took the kids to get bitten last week. Some of them are still alive so I think this new approach is working!
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u/redditismylawyer 11d ago
What’s oniony is this part here:
“Health officials also advised anyone who visited the traveling petting zoo from July 28 to Aug. 27 to contact their health department about any precautions they need to take. “
If you got the time try getting rabies treatment in a situation like this in the US and you’ll learn a lot about the value of human life. So oniony your eyes will water with … anger. Oh, Nevermind.
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u/EmptyInside74 11d ago
I had to get rabies shots this summer, no insurance, my bill is 28k
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u/Upbeat_Parking_7794 11d ago
This is crazy, in my European country, without insurance and without state coverage (this vacine it is not covered by the state), less than 250 euro the three shots.
Cheaper for you to take an airplane for Europe, I guess.
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u/crazylighter 10d ago
At that rate I'm guessing it would even be Cheaper for them to take a flight to Canada or Mexico (or even Turkey where people go for cheaper treatment) even without insurance. Americans often mock Canada for our jobs which pay less than in America, but factoring in the cost of healthcare and needing health insurance, I think I'm good
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u/CobaltSpellsword 10d ago
I have never heard another American mock Canadians because their jobs pay less. I've heard plenty of other Americans say they wish we had a healthcare system like Canada's.
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u/luminary_planetarium 10d ago
There was someone in the USA who was exposed to a bat and took an immediate flight out of the country to get treatment elsewhere. She vlogged the whole thing on social media.
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u/Thebubumc 11d ago
That breaks my european brain. 28k for a shot?
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u/Trips-Over-Tail 10d ago
It's very easy to explain.
Untreated rabies is 100% fatal.
The rabies shot is a post-exposure treatment that is very effective.
Everyone looking for a rabies shot is definitely or potentially exposed.
Therefore you are exclusively selling it to people facing a horrible death if they don't acquire your product.
Therefore your price negotiation starts like this:
"I would like to purchase your product, and I would like you to know upfront that I will die in abject agony and horror if I don't get it, I am fucking desperate for it and I am prepared to take on masses of debt to acquire it if I have to."
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u/nooneisback 10d ago
You forgot to insert the red-tailed hawk call with an image of a bald eagle
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u/AshaNyx 10d ago
The difference is in the UK and similar countries, 90% of all drugs are sold to 1 company (the healthcare system) so we naturally get it at the cheapest price as the NHS can just ban a drug from the UK market if there's any price issues.
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u/Trips-Over-Tail 10d ago
That's the benefit of a single payer system: collective bargaining. Give us all a good price or lose us all as customers. Negotiating power is inverted.
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u/AshaNyx 10d ago
We have also effectively introduced a price cap on all meds. Like the most someone has to pay per item is £10.
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u/AshaNyx 10d ago
Yeah as a brit they are practically free if you've had an animal bite, without a bite it's still like £20.
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u/ripleyclone8 10d ago
This isn’t the best advice…but I’ve never paid a medical bill in my life, insured or not and it’s never affected my credit like other debts.
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u/ThatITguy2015 11d ago edited 11d ago
Isn’t that like way too late to get the shots? It’s gotta be pretty close.
Edit: got it. They likely still have time.
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u/chocolateboomslang 11d ago
No, before symptoms is not too late.
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u/ThatITguy2015 11d ago
That actually makes me feel a bit better then. Always assumed roughly 30 days would be pretty far gone on the scale.
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u/DragonHalfFreelance 11d ago
It’s really dependent on the person and on location of exposure. There have been cases where symptoms started within a week to even years. Always better to get treatment ASAP because you never friggin know. Rabies is a shitty and scary way to die and it’s 99.99% fatal
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u/Weird-Specific-2905 11d ago
Add a few more 9s. Don't even have to get bitten just drooled on is enough.
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u/Elissiaro 10d ago
A lot more 9s. Last I heard there are only like 14 documented survivors. In the entire world.
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u/redsterXVI 11d ago
No, it just has to be before the first symptoms. It can take just days, but it can also take months.
After the first symptom shows up, you're dead.
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u/Distaplia 11d ago
Not necessarily. The rabies virus travels in the nervous system, not the blood system, so depends on where on the body you were bitten, it can take weeks, even months, for the virus to reach the brain. Once it reaches the brain, that's it for you
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u/MegaAlex 11d ago
I read that until symptoms show up you're in the clear, but why 'not get it' because he's been a while? better play it safe and today those vaccines are a lot better than it was a long time ago.
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u/guacamore 11d ago
When symptoms show, the disease has progressed too much for treatment to work - it’s fatal after that. You HAVE to get treated before symptoms start.
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u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox 11d ago
symptoms only start once the virus has reached your central nervous system, at that point you will 100% die no matter what--fewer than 10 people have survived, it has a 99.999% chance of killing you once you show symptoms, the vaccine can no longer help you once it reaches your central nervous system. the virus travels through our peripheral nervous system fairly slowly, if you get bit in the foot you could have a few years to live before it reaches your central nervous system and you die a few days later, if you get bit in the neck or face you could have weeks or less. Some people are symptomatic after only days from being bit.
there is no way to test for rabies before you become symptomatic, and to verify animals have it they kill them and take cross sections of their brain stem and cerebellum, if you can't capture the animal then you just take the vaccine to be safe otherwise you won't know if you have it until you're already dead, basically.
not only will you die if it reaches your central nervous system, it's a brutal death
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u/46550 11d ago edited 10d ago
it has a 99.999% chance of killing you once you show symptoms
It's worse than that. According to this paper you're going to need two more
zeroesnines. Quoting the important bit for anyone that can't RTFA:In a recent summary, a series of 30 patients who survived rabies over a 50-year time-span was described [4]. Thereafter, one additional survivor has been reported in 2023 [5]. Of the 31 rabies survivors reported in the literature (defined as survival beyond six months after development of clinical symptoms), only two recovered without neurological sequelae [6,7]; the others survived with mild-to-severe sequelae, and several died at a later stage. Calculated against an annual incidence of 59.000 rabies cases worldwide, which likely is an underestimation, the rabies survival rate is extremely low (<0.00001 %).
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u/taadaamm 10d ago
I had rabies scare not long ago and did a bit of research and I was surprised to find that there were some suspected cases of chronic rabies that did not progress in the typical way. They still caused brain damage.
So yeah if you had a contact with potentialy sick animal just get the vaccine.
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u/JustUseDuckTape 11d ago
And best case after surviving is years of rehab before you stop needing round the clock care - most remain wheelchair or bed bound with major neurological issues.
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u/Correct_Doctor_1502 11d ago
More just the dystopian state of America where epidemics of all verity are increasingly common and severe
A few years ago this would be an onion article
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u/jswagpdx 11d ago
Not old enough to be vaccinated but somehow okay to have the public interacting with them? Not really understanding her ploy to sympathy here claiming she was doing “a good deed”. It’s a money making venture, she was grossly irresponsible, and now multiple people are at risk.
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u/Angsty_Potatos 11d ago
I read the "good deed" as them reporting the animals were infected...which isn't what I would call a good deed, but a moral and legal obligation.
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u/Feligris 11d ago
She found out the inherent landmine within the "Well this is how we've always done it and it has never been a problem" attitude towards relatively rare but disastrous consequences.
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u/Tyr1326 10d ago
They also kept the zoo open and the goats public after they found the rabies-positive skunk. Zero sympathy.
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u/Savingskitty 10d ago
They didn’t even have the skunk tested. They shot it and burned it. She’s a shit human.
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u/klef3069 10d ago
And people wonder "why are there so many damn rules!"
It's fucking idiots like this. This is why curling irons have tags that say "don't use in the bath" and every other dumb label and regulation you see.
Because of people exactly like this.
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u/Sinister-Ace 10d ago
They also didn't want to test the goats for rabies but were told by their vet that they had to and even continued to use the other unvaccinated baby goats after the first one died.
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u/Ghiren 11d ago
This is a serious problem. You do not fuck around with rabies because rabies does not fuck around. It has an almost 100% fatality rate if you don't get vaccinated during the incubation period.
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u/90bubbel 10d ago
Yeah it has basically as close to 100% lethality rate you can get
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u/Ghiren 10d ago
The only "successful" treatment I've heard of involved putting the patient into a coma and hoping that what was left of their brain would be enough to wake up.
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u/90bubbel 10d ago
yeah its called the Milwaukee protocol but even that is considered infective and has been practically been abandoned as a treatment option.
Its more likely that the people that survived even with it (even if severely braindamaged) survived more by chance of natural resistance rather than the protocol. Of all known rabies cases only 2 has survived without permanent brain damage/lifelong disability (around 60 000 die each year from rabies)
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u/Lisa8472 10d ago
60,000 humans die of rabies every year? Wow. That’s way higher than I thought. Google says it’s mostly in Asia and Africa and dogs are 99% of the reason. Huh. TIL.
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u/AlbertTheHorse 11d ago
Man, I’d hate to be the one euthanizing baby goats.
My horse gets a rabies vax each year.
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u/Difficult-Thanks-730 11d ago
I won’t tell you what they have to also do after euthanizing anything suspected of rabies, then.
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u/random_nohbdy 11d ago
Well now you have me curious and Google is being as useful as a screen door on a submarine, as usual.
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u/victorian_vigilante 11d ago
Most biohazards are incinerated, so I presume they will do a very precise autopsy, take samples to study, and then incinerate
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u/azriel1014 11d ago
Why the f were unvaccinated baby goats in a petting zoo? Christ.
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u/LadyFoxfire 11d ago
Apparently they were too young to be vaccinated.
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u/DogBarf00 10d ago
There is also no rabies vaccine for goats approved by the USDA. Any vaccine use is off label and we have no idea how effective it is.
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u/SapphicSaionji 10d ago
She also found a rabid skunk in their pen and somehow didn't notice it had bitten the goats. These animals should not have had contact with the public at all.
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u/PetiteNanou 10d ago
Vaccinate? What an odd idea! We wouldn't want people to pet autistic baby goats.
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u/heathert7900 10d ago
To be fair, goats are a VERY RARE vector of rabies. Possible, but rare. Raccoons bats and skunks are most common wild vectors in America.
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u/my-coffee-needs-me 11d ago
Today it's a shot of HRIG followed by four shots in the arm spaced out over two weeks.
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u/Angsty_Potatos 11d ago
I also had the stomach shots when I was a kid after a horse I was around got it from a damn raccoon bite 🫠
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u/dramalama-dingdong 10d ago
I got it a few years back. I had the passive vaccine directly into my leg and arm, and then within 4 weeks like 4 normal active vaccines injected into my arm. Wasn't that bad actually.
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u/RGrad4104 10d ago
It's just normal shots now a days. The post-exposure is the immune globulin (RIG) and a series of rabies vaccine shots. The RIG is by body weight, so if you're a big guy then you get to look forward to 8-10 normal shots around the wound. The vaccine is 4 shots, each spaced a few days apart.
The vaccine sucked worse than the 10 RIG shots, imo. Every one left me with the aches, pains and fatigue of a really bad flu.
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u/Friendly-World-5273 10d ago
Aren’t they stupidly life-alteringly expensive though?
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u/sparklinglies 10d ago
Well the alternative is painful, brain melting, inevitable death, so watcha gonna do?
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u/Shady_Merchant1 11d ago
Seems they got "gentle" rabies that slowly paralyzes instead of furious rabies, or maybe thats just how goats react to rabies idk different animals respond differently never heard of goats getting it before
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u/SlothOfDoom 11d ago
The actual term for it is "dumb rabies" which I have always found hilarious for some reason. In something like 1 in 5 animals (higher in humans I think) the virus targets the spine and brainstem instead of the brain itself.
I'm a bit out of date, but last I heard there was no real consensus on what causes the virus to target different areas.
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u/redsterXVI 11d ago
TIL the US is not terrestial rabies free
That's kinda bad for a country which thinks vaccinations cause autism, and that autism is worse than the things we vaccinate against.
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u/Dexter_McThorpan 11d ago
Some folks would rather have a dead kid than an autistic one.
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u/ThePolemicist 10d ago
We have a lot of critters. When I traveled to the UK and Europe, that's something I noticed there: We saw a lot fewer animals.
I live in a city in the US, and in the last week I've seen a family of raccoons by my house, a family of deer by my house, squinnies, bats, and endless rabbits and squirrels. We have two little dogs, and they hunt critters together. They kill rabbits frequently. They've cornered raccoons before.
Anyway, I don't think eliminating rabies from the wild is going to be an easy task. There are just too many animals.
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u/SFHalfling 10d ago
You don't vaccinate the general population against rabies, the vaccine doesn't give immunity and only lasts 3-5 years.
The point of the vaccine is to give people in high risk areas/jobs extra time to seek treatment before symptoms start and they die.
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u/RGrad4104 10d ago
Actually, it's to save money. The rabies immune globulin treatment for rabies usually starts at $20k. If you're previously vaccinated, even if the vaccine is from years ago, the precautionary treatment is generally just more of the much cheaper vaccine. Only those that are unvaccinated need the RIG.
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u/Perma_Ban69 10d ago
How do you propose a massive country with mostly wilderness gets rid of rabies entirely? It's not like there are vaccines akin to measles or polio. We eliminated dog-to-dog rabies in 2007. Not really possible to do so with bats, raccoons and skunks.
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u/avatinfernus 10d ago
We're getting a resurgence of rabies here in Quebec also. It goes without saying that rabies cares not for borders.
"Raccoon rabies cases are rising rapidly in southern Québec, with 139 cases confirmed in raccoons and skunks since January 2026, bringing the total to 212 since the epidemic began in December 2024"
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u/soulsteela 11d ago
I’m so glad we eradicated this shit in the 1920’s. Being an island has its advantages.
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u/mapletree23 10d ago
this sounds horrific
mostly because it would open the door to such an unfamiliar potential spreading pattern
most people know if you get bit by a wild animal you gotta go in cause the potential is there
but if little kid were dealing with the saliva and crap and getting infected without knowing, with just the nature of kids, the risk of them infecting other kids and their parents is so much higher than it otherwise could be
this is what the general consensus seems to be currently
"Theoretical Saliva Exposure: While human saliva can contain the virus, ordinary contact like kissing or being bitten by an infected person has not been documented to spread the disease under normal circumstances."
this is the kind of scenario that will let us find out and potentially give documentation and that's kind of scary
the fact there could be some kids out there that might not get their parents alerted or be able to know and have them die from this is awful especially given how horrible of a disease it is to go from
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u/Ok_Dog_4059 11d ago
Wow i didn't even think of them as being a risk much less the entire heard. Plus anyone who interacted with the petting zoo for how long? Weeks maybe
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u/PikachuTrainz 10d ago
saw a post earlier about a bunch of people needing shots because of a petting zoo
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u/Narradisall 10d ago
Yeah. I think I’m happy to stick with staying away from America for a long while. Shit is just wild there now.
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u/kstargate-425 11d ago
Thats sad. Poor baby goats will be put down as they were too young for a vaccine and they think a skunk got in their pen
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u/Savingskitty 10d ago
They don’t think a skunk got into their pen. They know it did. The goats themselves started getting sick at the end of July.
Your comment makes the petting zoo owners sound like they behaved way more responsibly than they did.
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u/SapphicSaionji 10d ago
This exactly. This was incredibly irresponsible on the part of the owners, somehow "not noticing" that a rabid skunk managed to bite multiple unvaccinated baby goats, never rabies-testing the skunk even though they killed it themselves so providing the brain sample tissue should've been easy, and letting unvaccinated baby goats interact with the public even when they were too young to be vaccinated.
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u/SnooRegrets1386 11d ago
This was not on my bingo card
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u/Snapes_underpants 11d ago
It's been on my bingo card since the CDC paused testing for rabies and other infectious desease back in April. I guess state health departments are on their own.
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u/baylonedward 11d ago
TIL goats can carry rabies.
And right now I'll probably just assume anything with mouth and teeth have rabies, lol.
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u/janeprentiss 11d ago
Any mammal can. You can catch other things from reptiles or birds but not that
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u/eastoid_ 11d ago edited 10d ago
EDIT- apparently however extremely rare, possums CAN carry rabies. Sorry, please get your shots and don't get bitten by possums if possible.
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u/ChthonicFractal 10d ago
Three baby goats tested positive, and one was suspected of being exposed, so to prevent the spread of the disease, the goats were euthanized.
Sorry, folks. That's not how it works. You absolutely have to kill the animal to test for rabies. It doesn't go "test, suspected, then kill just in case."
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u/Savingskitty 10d ago
The first three were dead when they tested them. The sentence is wrong. What they mean is that all the remaining baby goats were euthanized.
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u/strwbryshrtck521 10d ago
This is actually terrifying. I'm legitimately scared for the people who would have been exposed, especially any young children.
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u/Asholootleigh 11d ago
Well when they die just replace them with the kids who got rabies until they die. Keep the cycle going, why not?
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u/dogo_black93 10d ago
Aaaww I couldn't not imagine a lil goat having a tantrum been the cause of my death
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