You may have heard rumors about rabies

Myth: Are you a victim of exaggerated rabies propaganda?

1. China uses 15 million vaccines annually, of which 99.8% do not need to be vaccinated;

2. The incubation period of the virus is 2 weeks to 3 months, and China advertises it as 20 years;

3. “Inject vaccine within 24 hours” is not true;

4. Those who have been vaccinated do not need to be vaccinated again;

5. It is very rare for healthy dogs to spread the virus.

Truth:

Some time ago, "Southern Weekend" published an article criticizing the abuse of rabies vaccines and the excessive publicity of rabies in the media. The content of these two articles is detailed, the issues questioned do exist, and the criticisms are to the point.

However, these articles were greatly deviated during the secondary dissemination, so that the aforementioned rumors appeared on Weibo.

This rumor makes people think that if an individual is bitten by an animal, there is no need to do anything.

Real symptoms of rabies

Rabies is a zoonotic disease caused by the rabies virus. This virus has a strong affinity for nerve tissue. After entering the human body, the virus will start from the nerves around the bite site and gradually invade the nerve center. Clinically, symptoms such as hydrophobia, dyspnea, and dysphagia may occur.

When the disease course enters the final stage, the virus may travel along the nerves to various organs throughout the body, such as eyes, tongue, salivary glands, respiratory muscles, heart, etc. The patient may eventually die due to respiratory paralysis and circulatory failure. The entire course of the disease progresses rapidly, ranging from 2 days to a week from onset to death.

The length of the incubation period of rabies varies

The length of the incubation period experienced by patients before the onset of the disease varies, most of which are 1-3 months, but there are also cases of less than 1 week and more than 1 year; in children , bites on the head and face, and deep wounds with incomplete debridement have a short incubation period. The length of the incubation period experienced by patients before the onset of the disease varies, most of which are 1-3 months, but there are also cases where it is less than 1 week and more than 1 year; the incubation period is shorter in children, those with bites on the head and face, and those with incomplete deep debridement of wounds.

Do healthy dogs transmit rabies virus?

Animals responsible for the spread of rabies virus actually include dogs, cats, bats and a variety of tooth-eating animals. Among the above-mentioned animals, dogs are the main animals causing infection.

A national human rabies epidemiological survey mentioned [5] that among the 711 cases observed in areas with high rabies incidence in my country, 91% of the cases were attacked by dogs. According to the World Health Organization animal contact classification standards, 6.3% of these patients only had Category I contact with animals (that is, touching or feeding animals, or having their intact skin licked by animals), 30.4% were Category II contacts (that is, minor skin abrasions causing slight damage or no bleeding), and 63.3% were Category III contacts (penetrating skin bites or scratches, or mucous membrane contamination). In other words, the greater the degree of skin damage after contact with animals, the greater the likelihood of rabies.

Is the rabies vaccine useful?

The earlier the rabies vaccine is administered, the better the effect. However, even if the vaccine is injected more than 24 hours ago, the vaccine can be effective as long as the person has not become sick before the vaccine takes effect. People who have been exposed for several days and months and have not been vaccinated against rabies due to various reasons should also be vaccinated as long as they can get the vaccine. Those who have just been exposed should also receive a follow-up injection as soon as possible to allow the vaccine to take effect before they become ill.

How does the rabies vaccine work?

General infectious diseases use vaccines to produce immunity to the body in the following two ways:

1. Active immunity refers to the body’s response to antigen stimulation. Immunity established by specific responses. Active immunity takes days, weeks or longer to appear, but it can be maintained for a long time or even for a lifetime, and can be easily reactivated by injecting the required antigen;

2. Passive immunity, which means that the body obtains corresponding immunity by acquiring exogenous immune effector molecules (such as antibodies, etc.) or immune effector cells.