Scary. This site has useful information about rabies and the treatment but other articles say more about the outbreaks. So far there is no pattern. It spans the entire country, east coast to west coast to Alaska. The animals involved have no pattern either.
Here's an article from late August with some detail [1], including the affected states: New York, Massachusetts, Alaska, Arizona, California, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon and Vermont. I can't find anything about it on the CDC website though.
Edited to add another charming detail from the article: "A 2023 study published in the journal Vaccine found in a nationally representative sample of Americans that nearly 40% believed canine vaccines were unsafe and 37% believed that vaccines could lead their dogs to develop cognitive issues, such as autism."
Chagas disease is the one that scares me, since it seems easy to contract and not know it. Rabies is definitely more lethal but hopefully you could recognize the exposure event and get treated.
> six people have died from rabies nationwide since September 2024, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson confirmed to CNN. In addition, the CDC is tracking 14 potential outbreaks in 20 states,
So is that high or low? It would be useful to know what the median and max cases per year has been over the last few decades.
14 potential doesn't sound that bad if we're investigating them out of an abundance of caution.
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Edit: to semi-answer my own question, according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/reported-rabies-deaths?ta... there were 7 deaths in 2011. So we are in a decade high, but with the numbers being so low in general seems like it might just be statistical noise.
The short-term effects of relaxing vaccine requirements won’t be obvious right away, but the consequences will likely compound over time. I don’t know how much time of lower coverage it will take before we start to see measles, rabies, or others become regular problems again.
If you’re traveling, it’s more important than ever to make sure your own vaccines are fully up to date. And if you’re in a high-risk group, the US may not be the safest destination in the near future.
Please stop posting this garbage. The US has 3 to 4000 animal cases per year and less than 10 human cases per year and the 6 cases is within the usual band. There’s no source, no detail, and the “14 potential outbreaks” are just business as usual with hotspots and alerts in those hotspots. The entire article is just a rabies faq stuffed with their ads.
It is also true that 40% of dog owning households don't get their dogs vaccinated because they don't believe animal vaccines are medically necessary or effective. 37% of dog owners also believe vaccines can give their dog autism: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2023/nearly-half-of-dog...
There is no scientific evidence vaccines give dogs or humans autism.
> Rabies can be found in many other wildlife species, including raccoons, skunks, coyotes and foxes
It's worth checking with your state's health or wildlife department to learn which of those may have rabies in your state.
There are enough geographical barriers to divide many of those kinds of animals into multiple groups groups that are have either no contact with other groups or only rare contact. You might say have two distinct populations separated by a high mountain range. You can then have a group on one side where rabies is endemic and a group on the other side with no rabies.
A great example of isolated populations is Washington state, where no wild terrestrial mammal has ever been documented with rabies.
Some still freak out on Nextdoor if they see a Washington raccoon wander through their neighborhood in the daytime, posting warnings to keep children and pets inside to avoid rabies. They are partly spooked by merely seeing the raccoon because they know raccoons are nocturnal and so figure something must be wrong with it to make it come out in the daytime. They've often heard raccoons mentioned as rabies carries so jump to that as the explanation.
Raccoons are mostly nocturnal, but they will come out in the daytime to look for food if they aren't able to find enough food at night. In a place where the raccoons are barely getting by they may be out a lot in the daytime and people would get used to it. But at least around here they seem to be fine most of the year. It's only when they are pregnant or have young that they need to come out in the daytime, and that's not often enough for people to get used to seeing them.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 33.5 ms ] threadEdited to add another charming detail from the article: "A 2023 study published in the journal Vaccine found in a nationally representative sample of Americans that nearly 40% believed canine vaccines were unsafe and 37% believed that vaccines could lead their dogs to develop cognitive issues, such as autism."
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rabies-outbreaks-...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rabies-death...
Chagas disease is the one that scares me, since it seems easy to contract and not know it. Rabies is definitely more lethal but hopefully you could recognize the exposure event and get treated.
So is that high or low? It would be useful to know what the median and max cases per year has been over the last few decades.
14 potential doesn't sound that bad if we're investigating them out of an abundance of caution.
---
Edit: to semi-answer my own question, according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/reported-rabies-deaths?ta... there were 7 deaths in 2011. So we are in a decade high, but with the numbers being so low in general seems like it might just be statistical noise.
If you’re traveling, it’s more important than ever to make sure your own vaccines are fully up to date. And if you’re in a high-risk group, the US may not be the safest destination in the near future.
Actual CDC data: https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/php/protecting-public-health/inde...
Yes, there is a rise in rabies cases. In 2021 we experienced 2008 levels. The rise mostly has to do with domestic animal contact with bats: https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/media/releases/2022/p010...
It is also true that 40% of dog owning households don't get their dogs vaccinated because they don't believe animal vaccines are medically necessary or effective. 37% of dog owners also believe vaccines can give their dog autism: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2023/nearly-half-of-dog...
There is no scientific evidence vaccines give dogs or humans autism.
It's worth checking with your state's health or wildlife department to learn which of those may have rabies in your state.
There are enough geographical barriers to divide many of those kinds of animals into multiple groups groups that are have either no contact with other groups or only rare contact. You might say have two distinct populations separated by a high mountain range. You can then have a group on one side where rabies is endemic and a group on the other side with no rabies.
A great example of isolated populations is Washington state, where no wild terrestrial mammal has ever been documented with rabies.
Some still freak out on Nextdoor if they see a Washington raccoon wander through their neighborhood in the daytime, posting warnings to keep children and pets inside to avoid rabies. They are partly spooked by merely seeing the raccoon because they know raccoons are nocturnal and so figure something must be wrong with it to make it come out in the daytime. They've often heard raccoons mentioned as rabies carries so jump to that as the explanation.
Raccoons are mostly nocturnal, but they will come out in the daytime to look for food if they aren't able to find enough food at night. In a place where the raccoons are barely getting by they may be out a lot in the daytime and people would get used to it. But at least around here they seem to be fine most of the year. It's only when they are pregnant or have young that they need to come out in the daytime, and that's not often enough for people to get used to seeing them.