Refusal to be vaccinated: The old man in the United States died of bat rabies.

(A special reminder to patients with phobia: According to the available research data, bat rabies currently causes a certain degree of harm in the Western Hemisphere. And throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, the harm of bat rabies is actually very small! To date, no directly confirmed case of bat rabies has been reported in major Asian countries, such as China and India. ）

The public health department of illinois reported the state's first case of rabies since 1954 last September.

In mid-August last year, Thomas Krob, an 87-year-old man who lives in Lake County, woke up to find a bat biting his neck, which he may have been woken up by. The bat that bit him was immediately captured and sent to the relevant departments for testing, and the results showed that they were positive for rabies. The advice given to him by experts is that he should immediately begin post-exposure treatment (PEP) for rabies: vaccination against rabies and rabies antibodies donated by others. The treatment could have saved his life. But he refused. The reason for the man's refusal to be vaccinated at the time was unclear, but the latest official report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the reason he refused to be vaccinated was out of "fear of vaccines." A month later, the person began experiencing rabies-related symptoms, including neck pain, headache, difficulty swallowing, numbness in the fingers, language impairment, and paralysis. He then died of rabies on 20 September. This is the first reported human rabies death in Illinois in nearly 70 years.

Health officials in Illinois say bats are the most common animal found with rabies in the state. Later, wildlife experts also found a bat community in the home of the deceased, and a group of bats lived in his home for a long time. The only way to confirm that bats have rabies is through laboratory testing. You can't tell if a bat has rabies just by looking at it. If a bat has a negative rabies test result in laboratory tests, people who have come into contact with or been bitten by the bat do not require preventive treatment.

It's unclear if Crobb had bite marks on his neck, but according to the CDC, the bats involved had small teeth and a bite wouldn't necessarily leave significant damage. It is also possible to contract rabies through other routes, but it is rare.

From the beginning of the year to the end of September 2021, 30 bats in Illinois have tested positive for rabies. In Illinois, more than 1,000 bats that may be exposed to human rabies are tested for rabies each year, and about 3 percent of bats test positive for rabies. If it is a random sample, the positive rate of rabies in ordinary bats is of course much lower.

bibliography:

1.Three Human Rabies Deaths Attributed to BatExposures — United States, August 2021 (August 2021, 3 people in the United States died of rabies from exposure to bats) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) / January 7, 2022 / Vol. 71 / No. 1

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7101a5-H.pdf

2. The Illinois Department of Public Health is Reporting the First Human Case of Rabies in Illinois Since 1954，News – Tuesday, September 28, 2021，

https://dph.illinois.gov/resource-center/news/2021/september/the-illinois-department-of-public-health-is-reporting-the-first-.html