Canadian boy, 11, dies of rabies after waking to bat on his face

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c982m1m95q9o

by ranit • 21 days ago

23 22 21 days ago

Horrific. Poor family.

Any direct human contact with a bat is an indication for rabies postexposure prophylaxi - medical treatment given immediately after potential exposure to a rabid animal.

Yes, this is the correct take here

This is one of those things that will kill you and it will hurt the whole time you're dying

Though on the good side it does away with antivaxxers pretty quickly

WesolyKubeczek• 21 days ago

Unfortunately, antivaxxers mostly go unharmed while their children suffer.

dinkblam• 21 days ago

while their children suffer

and (if there are too many of them) the rest of society

spants2• 20 days ago

antivax or anti experimental-covid-vax? There is a difference.

Torn• 21 days ago

This is awful, but why is this on hacker news

rob742• 21 days ago

To raise awareness?

clcaev• 21 days ago

It's a great demonstration of how public health communication fails: the most important part is at the tail of the article, below two advertisements, and it's about as obscure as one could write it:

Any direct human contact with a bat is an indication for rabies postexposure prophylaxi - medical treatment given immediately after potential exposure to a rabid animal.

The article should have also recommended they safely isolate the animal to have it tested for rabies.

cogman10• 21 days ago

Sad, but hopefully this tragedy informs someone about rabies in bats.

Bats are the number one carrier of rabies and their tiny bites are really easy to miss. If you touch a wild bat, you need to go to the hospital.

spants2• 20 days ago

UK: my wife handled a baby bat a couple of weeks ago that was found in a airbnb/hotel in the Lake District. No bites from it. This popped up in her newsfeed last night..... she is now at the hospital getting rabies shots (no symptoms luckily). The medical staff are treating it very seriously!

rob742• 21 days ago

Any direct human contact with a bat is an indication for rabies postexposure prophylaxi - medical treatment given immediately after potential exposure to a rabid animal.

This phrase is unnecessarily complicated, I expect something easier to understand from the BBC. It can't be stressed often enough: if there's even the slightest suspicion that someone has been bitten, scratched etc. by any wild animal or even "just" a feral cat/dog, get them a rabies vaccine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_vaccine) immediately. Maybe the term "prophylaxi" (shouldn't it be prophylaxis?) is preferred nowadays because of the unnecessary controversies over vaccines, but I won't mince words here...

rich_sasha• 20 days ago

Despite being such a "household name", rabies is in fact the single deadliest disease in humans. If untreated, results in pretty much 100% mortality. There's a mere handful of people surviving rabies without treatment in recorded history.

That's worse than Ebola, anthrax, SARS, MERS, and anything else you can think of.

raverbashing2• 20 days ago

Yes yes to all this and here's the thing

if there's even the slightest suspicion that someone has been bitten, scratched etc

With Bats, always considered you've been bitten. Especially in situations like "woke up with a bat in the bedroom" - unless you can confirm the type of bat, take this as yes, it's hospital time

As noticed by the article, bat bites can be pretty painless

apple4ever• 19 days ago

Yes maybe though I've read not as much as you think, unless it happens while you were sleeping or drunk.

Besides, even if it is, you will still notice a bad on you, because they have enough weight. You notice a small bug- you'll notice an animal that might weigh as much as a mouse or rat.

mattrighetti3• 21 days ago

At first, an emergency clinic prescribed the boy antiviral medication used to treat infections caused by herpes viruses as they presumed he might have Bell's palsy, the temporary paralysis of facial muscles on one side of the face.
Then he went to hospital on back-to-back visits, first getting a presumed diagnosis of herpes gingivostomatitis, a viral infection of the mouth and gums, then returning the following day after the right side of his face went weak, the journal states.

I know the timeline could not be accurate, but if they mentioned what happened with the bat why wasn’t rabies the very first thing they tested for? Even if the parents visited a clinic right after the fact I fear this would have ended up the same way, unfortunately, especially because rabies symptoms show up after some time

techjamie• 20 days ago

The only way to verify the presence of rabies is to bring in the animal that did the bite. But per the article, they released the responsible bat. Normally what you'd do in this case is the hospital gives you the rabies vaccine anyway just in case, because the alternative is if the animal was rabid, you die.

Bats are the most common carriers of rabies, and also you should watch out for any wild animal that's too comfortable getting close to a human. Especially more shy ones like raccoons and such.

mattrighetti3• 20 days ago

When I was little I remember rescuing a small bat, brought it around in my hands for a good hour. I guess I was very lucky :/

exoro• 20 days ago

I don't think they told the hospital about the bat. Probably didn't cross their mind of the reason it was happening unfortunately.

If the hospital knew he came in contact with a wild animal they would have put him on the rabies vaccine regardless of any sort of rabies testing.

Haven880• 21 days ago

Now I will always ask AI what to do. This incident likely preventable with basic query asking chatgpt.

mingus88• 20 days ago

That’s dumb. Call your local authorities.

I woke up to a bat in my house. Local animal control told us to go to the ER immediately and get the rabies cycle started.

Don’t play games.

Canadian boy, 11, dies of rabies after waking to bat on his face

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