I mean, in Europe, bats carry rabies - something like 1% of them - but there have been a grand total of three rabies cases in the last 50 years from bat bites across the entire continent.
As to mice and rats - the chance of getting rabies from them is negligible, anywhere - they usually end up incapacitated and dead through predation extremely rapidly.
I’ve been bitten by all of the above. No treatment beyond dousing the wounds with peroxide.
The closest a mouse ever came to killing me was when it pushed a rock out of a wall in the hovel in which I lived, which smashed the headboard of the bed a few inches from my skull.
I feel like this is all something that has been pushed by the American insurance industry. Again - 43 deaths in 50 years. Negligible.
If you really cared about risk management, you would never, ever get in a motor vehicle, and you would have insurance for putting on your pants in the morning.
Like so many things, rational risk management is overtaken by fear and emotion.
We had a bat in our bedroom here in France a couple of years ago. We weren't quite sure what to do so checked online and the diametrically opposed advice was hilarious. US sources read like this thread, whereas the French ones were like leave your windows open to allow them to fly out and a bunch of links to why bats are amazing and protected animals.
I guess the incidence rate is a bit higher in the US but yeah interesting risk management.
At the time I write this comment, the thread has been up for 9 hours and has 130 comments. I can't claim to have read them all, but in my scan of the entire page, yours is the only one I could find focusing on the actual facts instead of the fear-mongering.
I'm disappointed in this community. I suppose it's not fair to expect a lot of deep zoology background here, but damn.
What a weird take on risk management, I hope you aren’t responsible for managing anyone’s risk besides your own.
You’re advocating against the reason that rabies deaths are so few in your locality and dismissing the monumental amount of effort that went into making it so rare.
There are ~60,000 rabies deaths annually, most from places without access to prophylactic vaccination, and there is little to no public initiatives to control carrier populations or educate the public about the risks.
madaxe_again|1 year ago
As to mice and rats - the chance of getting rabies from them is negligible, anywhere - they usually end up incapacitated and dead through predation extremely rapidly.
I’ve been bitten by all of the above. No treatment beyond dousing the wounds with peroxide.
The closest a mouse ever came to killing me was when it pushed a rock out of a wall in the hovel in which I lived, which smashed the headboard of the bed a few inches from my skull.
I feel like this is all something that has been pushed by the American insurance industry. Again - 43 deaths in 50 years. Negligible.
If you really cared about risk management, you would never, ever get in a motor vehicle, and you would have insurance for putting on your pants in the morning.
Like so many things, rational risk management is overtaken by fear and emotion.
walkingthisquai|1 year ago
I guess the incidence rate is a bit higher in the US but yeah interesting risk management.
slfnflctd|1 year ago
I'm disappointed in this community. I suppose it's not fair to expect a lot of deep zoology background here, but damn.
More information on a balancing perspective can be found here: https://www.merlintuttle.org/rabies-in-perspective/
alphan0n|1 year ago
You’re advocating against the reason that rabies deaths are so few in your locality and dismissing the monumental amount of effort that went into making it so rare.
There are ~60,000 rabies deaths annually, most from places without access to prophylactic vaccination, and there is little to no public initiatives to control carrier populations or educate the public about the risks.