TIL rabies is an STD
TIL rabies is an STD
The risk of rabies is high in South Africa where the disease - the deadliest on earth - is endemic. Vaccination is your best protection against rabies.
The rabies virus is shed in saliva. More than 99% of all rabies cases (of which there are about 50,000 a year) are due to the transmission of the virus from the saliva of an infected animal/human into the bloodstream of another human.
The website linked mentions “it has been reported” that rabies can be transmitted via intercourse, but doesn’t cite any papers that state as such. Likely the only way this could work is if a human with rabies performs oral sex on another person, creates micro-abrasions on the genital tissue of their partner while shedding the virus in their saliva which infects the 2nd person.
So while it might be technically possible, rabies doesn’t meet the criteria of what we typically refer to as STDs or STIs with our current knowledge and understanding of the disease.
Rabies travels through the body though, it's not just in one aspect of the body. That's why people often say that, if you get bit in the foot, you have a longer time to react in time than if you get bit somewhere like in the neck. The death comes when the virus' influence reaches the brain, after which it's sadly too late. So without a doubt there is more that could spread it than saliva, we just don't get exposed to most other bodily fluids under normal circumstances.
Rabies travels through the body though, it's not just in one aspect of the body. That's why people often say that, if you get bit in the foot, you have a longer time to react in time than if you get bit somewhere like in the neck.
Yea, pretty much.
The death comes when the virus' influence reaches the brain, after which it's sadly too late.
Yup
So without a doubt there is more that could spread it than saliva, we just don't get exposed to most other bodily fluids under normal circumstances.
This is 100% FUD and nothing else. Rabies does not life in other bodily fluids. It lives in our nerve tissue, brain tissue and saliva. Not in our blood, not in our pee, not in our feces, not in our semen, not in vaginal fluids, not in pus, really not in any bodily fluids other than saliva.
Everything’s an STD if you try hard enough.
I hadn't put two and two together like that. What inspired all this was someone compared rabies to mononucleosis. Both are spread through saliva, but it was said during the comparison that we always think of that being rabies' signature while in the case of mono it's seen as an obligatory bodily fluid bonus in addition to the fact that mono is in the STD family, having to do with the fact that it's normal for STD's to be spread exclusively via bodily fluids, the logic being one should then think back to rabies and think "well of course it's spread through bites, that's the obligatory way something can be spread", the only differences being rabies just happens to compel mammals to bite each other (hence us associating it with the saliva signature) and mononucleosis doesn't typically kill anyone.