Canadian boy, 11, dies of rabies after waking to bat on his face

tuwtuwtuwtuw

Horrific. Poor family.

raverbashing

> Any direct human contact with a bat is an indication for rabies postexposure prophylaxi - medical treatment given immediately after potential exposure to a rabid animal. Yes, this is the correct take here This is one of those things that will kill you and it will hurt the whole time you're dying Though on the good side it does away with antivaxxers pretty quickly

Torn

This is awful, but why is this on hacker news

cogman10

Sad, but hopefully this tragedy informs someone about rabies in bats. Bats are the number one carrier of rabies and their tiny bites are really easy to miss. If you touch a wild bat, you need to go to the hospital.

rob74

> Any direct human contact with a bat is an indication for rabies postexposure prophylaxi - medical treatment given immediately after potential exposure to a rabid animal. This phrase is unnecessarily complicated, I expect something easier to understand from the BBC. It can't be stressed often enough: if there's even the slightest suspicion that someone has been bitten, scratched etc. by any wild animal or even "just" a feral cat/dog, get them a rabies vaccine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies_vaccine ) immediately . Maybe the term "prophylaxi" (shouldn't it be prophylaxis?) is preferred nowadays because of the unnecessary controversies over vaccines, but I won't mince words here...

mattrighetti

> At first, an emergency clinic prescribed the boy antiviral medication used to treat infections caused by herpes viruses as they presumed he might have Bell's palsy, the temporary paralysis of facial muscles on one side of the face. > Then he went to hospital on back-to-back visits, first getting a presumed diagnosis of herpes gingivostomatitis, a viral infection of the mouth and gums, then returning the following day after the right side of his face went weak, the journal states. I know the timeline could not be accurate, but if they mentioned what happened with the bat why wasn’t rabies the very first thing they tested for? Even if the parents visited a clinic right after the fact I fear this would have ended up the same way, unfortunately, especially because rabies symptoms show up after some time

Haven880

Now I will always ask AI what to do. This incident likely preventable with basic query asking chatgpt.