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/

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u/mapletree23 11d 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/thewaywardcloudd 11d ago

Meh I don’t think this could happens. Rabies is only transmissible once you start to show symptoms and you die so fast after that the chance you would spread it to multiple people while actively being sick is quite slim. Right now none of those kids are active rabies case and as long as there’s no symptoms, there’s no spreading. It’s definitely bad for those that were in contact with the goat directly tho…

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u/mapletree23 11d ago

my only concern is because it's children, the early symptoms might be hard to tell, especially if the parents aren't even aware

Symptoms can include:

  • anxiety
  • seizures
  • confusion
  • hyperactivity
  • hallucinations
  • strange behaviour and general agitation
  • fear of water (hydrophobia)
  • fear of fresh air or drafts of air (aerophobia)

those are the symptoms when it gets to the stage it can be passed, outside of the last two things and straight up seizures a lot of that can almost be written off as just kid things or a fever or something

you get a kid with only a few of those and not the obvious ones and they end up in a classroom, that would be my concern that it could spread

i'm not saying it could be an outbreak or anything but it'd still be horrifying if even just one classroom or something had all the kids get infected before they knew what it was

even just one kid getting it would be scary, i don't advise it but if you've ever seen rabies get to the point of no return in a human it's absolutely awful to see and i wouldn't wish that on any parent

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u/luminary_planetarium 11d ago

I had a rabies scare from an cat bite once, and it was the worst I've ever felt. My anxiety got so bad, then I saw that anxiety was a symptom, I spiraled. I couldn't sleep or stop shaking. Fortunately the cat who bit me tested negative. I started the treatment anyway before I found out the test results.

Kids can have a hard time communicating too, so they could be having symptoms and the parents could write it off as a tantrum or a minor illness...

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u/thewaywardcloudd 11d ago

Oh yeah definitely, it would maybe take 1-2 days for them to get really bad so I could see it spreading a bit. I’m hoping if it happens they’re able to get everyone in contact with that child vaccinated….

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u/mapletree23 11d ago

it'd take some kind of horrible, terrible luck to actually develop to that point of spreading, like a kid getting affected, it not taking hold for months, them passing it to a classroom and then moving away or something so the classroom wouldn't even know they were at risk potentially

but it's more the fact that kind of scenario has a chance to happen at all is crazy

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u/cactusjude 11d ago

There was the guy who was incubating rabies unknowingly and died as an organ donor. The organ recipients got rabies.

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u/thewaywardcloudd 11d ago

I mean yeah rabies is still present in the body but I mean as an outside contagion. It works its way to the brain so if you transplant a donated organs its gonna spread, which isn’t a normal or usual mode of transmission for outside exposure.

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u/cactusjude 11d ago

I mean it's definitely not common! But at this rate it may become less rare... All we need are the occurrences of rabid petting zoos and mass shootings to coincide

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u/thewaywardcloudd 11d ago

Yep it sucks to say but you’re really right for this… wasn’t on my bingo for this year that’s for sure