Of bats and bites
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I was quite surprised by something I heard on This American Life. This was something that the show’s host, Ira Glass discovered during the course of doing a story on rabies and he felt he should share it with his listeners as a public service announcement.
Supposedly, you can be bitten by a bat in your sleep without knowing that you’ve been bitten and with no visible marks of a bite. So if you see someone asleep in a room with a bat, you ought to seek medical attention and if possible capture the bat for testing. Apparently there have been cases of children dying of rabies after having been bitten by bats in their sleep.
Also, you must take a rabies vaccine within 72 hours of being bitten if you want it to have any effect.
The problem is that no lab (at least in India) will risk telling you that the bat doesn’t have rabies, which if you ask me is a smart thing.
I was once bitten by an uncle’s dog and did extensive research till I finally figured out that there was no option but to get the rabies shots. The only way to test the dog was to take its brain to the lab and I didn’t know of any way to do that without killing it. Even then, like I mentioned earlier, no lab will tell you that the dog doesn’t have rabies.
Another option is to wait for the dog to show symptoms but by then it will be too late to take the shots. Funnily, even if you are bitten by a rabid dog, the chance of contracting rabies is very small (~5%). The only problem is that if you have got it, the chances of dying are 100%.
Death by rabies, which attacks the brain, is terrible and it would be better to shoot yourself instead of going through it. There are only 7 people recorded in history who have ever survived, all of them from India which has the highest incidence of rabies in the world, 95% of all cases if I remember correctly. Even then, most survived as mere vegetables
The prices of the shots, imported from France, have dropped from Rs 700 each when I had them 7-8 years ago to Rs 300 today. My Dad started had his first shot last week after being bitten by a cat. Cat bites are even worse because they often never show any symptoms.
Thanks to the animal lovers, the dog menace in Bangalore and other Indian cities remains unchecked. The lobbing influence of dog lovers is disproportionately higher than their chances of getting bitten in the confines of their big cars. It’s the slum dwellers, pedestrians, street children, bus commuters, and motorcyclists who have to bear the risk of being bitten. Luckily, the dog gangs (packs of 20-50 dogs) that used to roam Bangalore 10 years ago aren’t as big a problem today.
Was this article about bats?
I couldn’t agree more. About 3 years ago, when I was in B’lore, even rickshaws weren’t safe. Packs of dogs (numbering in the dozens) would sometimes chase after my rickshaw and even try to poke their heads in. I can only imagine the plight of a person on a scooter or motorbike.
Funny you mention the pack of dogs, I was speaking about this very same topic with a co-worker in a totally unrelated conversation.
When I was in Bangalore 11 years ago I had started hating these dog packs with a passion. They were a true menace to the the motorcycle rider and after initially trying to avoid them, I would ride straight towards them - hoping to a land a good kick (I never was successful).
Then one night, I happened to be on foot and a pack of about 10 dogs started following me. It is then that I realized what a dog eat dog world really means and that only a thin separation exists between the ‘civilized’ man and the ’savage’ man. I tried to ignore them at first, but they got progressively closer to me. I finally decided that flight was not an option and I reached for a rock. It was truly a primal moment. Fear, rage - you name it. I had only one thought in my mind. I was going to smash the skull of the dog I thought must be the alpha male.
My murderous designs were in all likelihood competely unexecutable, but thankfully for me the dogs decided to turn around and make a run for it. I hurled the rock at them for good measure. I heard one of them yelping. Needless to say, I avoided walking alone down a dark street after that.
My better half is a vet and he tells me that in India when you examine dogs (as in household pets), you have to be wary when handling them that the dog does not actually have rabies or has been bitten by a rabid dog as the owners will not inform you beforehoand! There have been cases where his colleagues have been bitten by their patients and they would have to go through the torture of having the rabies shots!
The rabies shots are no longer the torture they used to be. Lore has it that the old shots had to be administered in the belly button and you needed to take a dozen or so shots. Even then it wasn’t fool proof and often the shots themselves could prove fatal.
Now you just need to take 3 normal injections in the arm. I had a very rare allergic reaction to my shots which took a year to subside but otherwise the shots are very pure and have no side effects.
This is also something that I couldn’t understand. In my research, I found out that my uncle’s dog was vaccinated against rabies but there was nothing I could find that said that vaccinated dogs couldn’t carry the virus. That means the dog shots are good for the dogs but not for humans who can be bit by a vaccinated carrier. That’s not logical because why would people vaccinate their pets if it was dangerous for themselves? Can you please ask your better half if vaccinated pets are dangerous.
This sounds counter intuitive but the way to stop the dogs from chasing you is to slow down your vehicle and stop. Try it out the next time you are here.
I don’t know what happened but you don’t see the large packs these days, now they normally hang out in 3s and 4s.
The dog lovers have got the local administration to catch the stray dogs, neuter the males and let them go. If I am right, dogs aren’t monogamous so even if there is one non-neutered male in the gang… you know where I am leading.
The dogs should be shipped off to China.
As for the bats, how long is it before one gets the symptoms of Rabies? crewcut may not remember (as we were drowning in booze by that time) but a few weeks ago, we were visited by a bunch of bats while on a houseboat cruise in Kerala. Though I don’t think they bit us.
[...] While it’s good to retain the “Indianness” in the names, I do think this is a huge waste of money and resources that should be better spent on say, solving the dog problem in Bangalore. Besides, you don’t have to “officially” change the name. Both the English and local names can co-exist like in many other places in the world. [...]
Okay Crewcut, I went and got more enlightment on the subject from the Other Half.
Have discovered that it is a bit more complicated than I thought. In a nutshell:
The vaccine is good for about 2 years and then the dogs need to get it again.
The dosage for the bitten dog is dependent on various factors, including the distance of the bite from the head. General rule of thumb is the further the bite from the head, the better the chances of the dog surviving.
And even if the bitten dog has been vaccinated, (remember, you need to know if it has been vaccinated within 2 years - was that the case in your uncle’s dog?) you would still not take any chances with rabies, and you would get the dog treated or at least looked at, and let the experts decide.
By the way, while I mentioned before that his colleagues needed the shot after “Being bitten”, I find that I was mistaken. They were not bitten. They handled the dogs.
Basically this means that all you need is contact with the saliva to be at risk So if you go and pat a random dog, you could potentially be at risk of contracting rabies!
Moral of the story? Let sleeping dogs lie.
A correction - the story was not by Ira Glass, it was Alex Blumberg. Some more interesting details. The story was about a woman who was attacked by a rabid racoon. Rabies causes an animal to lose all its inhibitions, makes it aggressive and to be full of adenaline - giving it extra strength. The woman managed to hold the racoon down and called for help. Her husband and son had to hit it with a tire iron for 5 minutes before it died.
Zen, thanks for the research and the info.
What would be useful to know is what happens to humans if they are btten by a vaccinated dog. To make this a little complex there are two scenarios:
Scenario I: Dog1 gets vaccinated -> Rabid Dog2 bites Dog1 -> Dog1 bites human
Scenario II: Rabid Dog2 bites Non-vaccinated Dog1 -> Dog1 gets vaccinated -> Dog1 bites human
Tafkap, are you sure it wasn’t by Stephen King or Dean Koontz?
Crewcut, let me pose the two scenarios to OH and get back to you.
One thing though, definitely in both cases, what would happen to humans is that they would be in pain! ha ha ha
Okay, just spoke to OH, and goodness, according to him, there is insufficient information.
For both cases you need the detailed history.
For example, Scenario I: what was the dosage of the vaccine given to the dog? What was the time span between the D1 being bitten by D2 and then biting human. Why did D1 bite the human? i.e is it normal behaviour for D1 to bite or abnormal behaviour? (Not all dogs bite). If D1 bit human straight after being bitten by D2, it might not be a problem as there is not enough time for the rabies to reach D1’s saliva (insufficient incubation period). etc etc
Similarly, need more detailed history for Scenario II.
Indeed, the story was part of a ‘This American Life’ halloween special on real life horror stories (the podcast of this episode is available now).
In order to counter rabies a one dog policy from Beijing.
The Bangalore Marathon had a few runners set their personal best timimngs, thanks to help from the dogs who were chasing them.