Epidemic Hazard in Canada on Tuesday, 17 April, 2012

People exposed or believed to have been exposed to rabies are given a combination of rabies shots and human rabies immune globulin, antibodies taken from the blood of people immunized against rabies. Toronto Public Health is interviewing close contacts of the person and hospital staff who treated him or her before the diagnosis of rabies was made. "We're still in the middle of those moving numbers. But I can tell you all told, the number of people that even need to be screened to find out if there's a problem is probably going to be under 75," Rae said. The investigation isn't helped by the fact that it isn't known how the person contracted the rabies virus, which is almost always fatal. By the time the diagnosis was made, the person was too ill to help in the investigation, Rae suggested. "We do suspect that it's travel related. That part is not entirely clear yet, but it might become clearer in the next couple of days. Because one of the things that the laboratory does is strain typing of the specific (virus)," Rae said. "So what actual strain of rabies is it?"

scary s*it:((

How can you get rabies and not even know what kind of animal you got it from. Does this person get bitten a lot or what???

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is testing samples from the person to try to identify the strain of rabies, which could indicate which animal the infection came from and where transmission took place. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control explained that studying the genome of the particular virus can tell you a lot about what might have happened. "You can exquisitely type . . . the virus. And so for example you could tell that it's a bat rabies virus from say the New World or it's a dog rabies virus from Haiti or it's a raccoon rabies virus from North America," Rupprecht said. "What it doesn't tell you necessarily is the animal that did the biting." By that Rupprecht meant that the test won't be able to tell if a rabid bat infected a cat and the cat infected the person. Testing would simply show infection with bat rabies.

They have a rabies vaccine for humans ???

yep, I had to go through it when I was a teenager, got attacked by a foaming mouthed dog.. the shots are f'ng horrid, like 30 shots overall, in the neck, stomache, ass, arms, legs and more.. I couldn't sit down all day

Damn, that musta sucked....
Still wondering how the person doesn't know how they contacted it...
You obviously know a foaming mouthed dog bit you, and I'm pretty sure I'd know if an animal bit me... hmmmmm

THAT sounds horrid !!! Butt shots are the worst..neck.aghhh

yesterday there was a story about a bunch of raccoons showing signs of rabies, but it not actually being rabies...

can't find it now.

No one noticed that they said this virus is spread via fleas and ticks.
Mosquito's could carry it as well.

Fuck.

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

Cats are being struck down by a mystery disease that turns them into 'living robots'.

Their legs become rigid, giving them an odd, stiff gait, their personality changes and their tail stiffens and sticks out.

There is no known treatment or cure. The symptoms become progressively worse and the animals are put down when their suffering becomes too much.

Read more: [link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

it was uber brutal lol... yea, I really am at a loss as to how someone doesn't know how they contracted it...

they certainly are lol.. the needles were a couple of millimeters thick and like 8 cm long