An astounding 2000 people die of rabies every year in China. There might be a reason why they don't have mandatory vaccination of dogs there, and if some reader knows, tell the rest of us in the comments. Meanwhile the Chinese authorities in Jining are attacking rabid dogs the way we recommend countries deal with bird flu: by killing all dogs within three miles of a rabid one. Jining has had 16 rabies cases in the last 8 months. This is the second mass dog killing to control rabies in China. For those of us with dogs, it is very distressing prospect and I won't try to defend it here except to note that the mass slaughter of poultry for the same purpose doesn't seem to bother most people in the West. (Continued below)
That aside, rabies is a fatal disease. Fatal as in 100% case fatality. Once you develop symptoms there is little that can be done (only two survivors have been described in the medical literature). I've never seen a case of rabies myself, but I've seen a movie of a rabies patient and that's enough. The virus attacks the central nervous system and victims die of horrible convulsions but seem fully conscious until the end. You get rabies by being bitten by a rabid mammal, like a dog, raccoon, or a bat.
If you have been bitten by a rabid animal you have about 10 days to get vaccinated against rabies ( called post-exposure prophylaxis, PEP, because it occurs after exposure, not before as with most vaccinations). Unfortunately some people can be bitten by rabid animals and not be aware of it, so even the possibility is enough to warrant PEP. That's the situation some 950 girl scouts are facing in Virginia after they attended a camp where bats were found in cabins where they slept (Boston Globe). Rabies is very uncommon in the US, with only a case or two a year but in the last ten years there have been 19 cases and 17 of them have been from bat bites:
Among these, 14 patients had known encounters with bats. Four people awoke because a bat landed on them and one person awoke because a bat bit him (these events occurred within their primary residences). One person was reportedly bitten by a bat from outdoors while he was exiting from his residence. Six persons had a history of handling a bat while removing it from their primary residences. One person was bitten by a bat while releasing it outdoors after finding it on the floor inside a building. One person picked up and tried to care for a sick bat found on the ground outdoors. Three males ages 20, 29 and 64 had no reported encounters with bats but died of bat-associated rabies viruses.
Here is CDC's advice:
People usually know when they have been bitten by a bat. However, most types of bats have very small teeth which may leave marks that disappear quickly. There are situations in which you should seek medical advice even in the absence of an obvious bite wound. For example, if you awakened because a bat landed on you while you were sleeping, if you awakened and found a bat in your room, if you see a bat in a room with an unattended child, or see a bat near a mentally impaired or intoxicated person, try to safely capture the bat and have the bat tested, and seek medical advice. (CDC)
PEP consists of an initial injection of rabies immune globulin with a course of rabies vaccine on days 0, 3, 7, 14, and 28. The new recombinant vaccine is given in the muscle of the upper arm, as opposed to the abdominal injections of the old duck embryo versions. The new vaccine also has markedly less side effects.
Except for the ones on the wallet. A treatment course is about $2000.
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An astounding 2000 people die of rabies every year in China. There might be a reason why they don't have mandatory vaccination of dogs there, and if some reader knows, tell the rest of us in the comments.
My guess is that people of many nations outside of Europe and the US don't place as much value on animals as pets and simply don't enforce "humane" treatment of animals (sterilization/euthanization/vaccination) to the degee we take for granted in the West. The dogs in question are probably feral strays.
I think that the main push in the US for rabies vaccination of dogs and cats is not for the sake of the animals but rather for the sake of the humans. While individuals with pet dogs might not think that way, the health departments that enforce rabies vaccination do so for the sake of the humans NOT for the sake of the pets. China being overpopulated may find 2,000 human deaths acceptable and may find clubbing dogs in districts with rabies to be cheaper than vaccinating all the dogs and cats in China. Or they may just be shortsighted. We get fined here in the US if we don't get our dogs vaccinated. Without that I can assure you that many people would not get their pets vaccinated. So to work you have to have people who can afford to pay for the shots, lots of vets, and a system of enforcement. Bet people in rural China can't afford to neuter their dogs, so dogs create dogs - and many may not have an "owner". Maybe China should start a one puppy policy? At any rate dogs and cats are probably still used for food in China and one can't get terribly emotional about an animal that might become dinner. This is not a foreign phenomenon so much as a farming phenomenon - and a poverty phenomenon - although culture does affect what can be food and what can't (unless desperate).
In the Yukon-Kuskokwim area of Alaska, as of 6.20.06 there have been 17 cases of rabies in six months. We have red fox, arctic voles and sled dogs. They cant even catch all the dogs to vaccinate them. And no body, I mean NO BODY would ever think of killing them.
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/7878064p-7771691c.html
If you think 2,000 deaths in China is astounding,according to Reuters India has over 20,000 deaths per year from rabies.(See http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=…)
And though post-exposure treatment costs only $32 there, instead of $2,000, the poor can't afford to get treated. According to the article, Calcutta has over 100,000 street dogs of which 65,000 are potential carriers of the rabies virus.
About 42,000 people die in car accidents in the US every year. Fatal car accidents are Fatal as in 100% case fatality.
I've never been in a fatal car accident, and have only witnessed a few personally. There's a really good car crash video where an unbelted dummy riding in a car moving 7 MPH that crashes into barrier has it's head smashed through the windshield. When the body retracts, the remaining windshield cuts at the throat. A human neck would have been severed. Very entertaining. The belted dummies go on to better things.
Once you are in a fatal car accident, you are dead, nothing can be done.
Well, something can be done. Here in the United States, we don't talk about it much. Fatal car accidents are hardly ever in the news. Why should we mull over it? If you're dead, you're dead. Stop the worries! When we had the 55 mph speed limits, we discovered that the frequency of fatal accidents went down. That was news. To counter that error, we lifted the 55 mph federal limit. Now, we're much more free to ignore the issue.
While a chinese army, walking 4 abrest into the sea could be sustained forever, we're only talking about 5 fatal accidents per hour - a rate that the US can sustain 24x7 easily.
I hate emoticons. The above is mostly humor with a few facts thrown in for dramatic effect.
It has been mooted that the Chinese government doesn't mandate canine rabies vaccination because it hasn't "officially" decided that keeping dogs as pets is okay. In the Red Army days, pet dogs were a bourgeois affectation that could get their human companions killed. Dogs are such successful commensualists, though, that hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens have been seduced by the canine parasites. Various municipalities try to impose weight restrictions, housing bans, exorbitant license fees, and one-strike mandates on the destruction of "dangerous" or even "threatening" dogs. As with all prohibitionary laws, compliance (or the lack thereof) is the real problem.
Incidentally, if you're not a dog owner, you might be surprised at the number of AMERICANS who rely on herd immunity to protect their beloved dogs. I used to volunteer with a group that offered obedience training classes in a relatively high-income suburb not far from Revere's home; we asked for proof of rabies vaccination as a liability buffer. I cannot tell you how many well-educated, high-paid professionals explained that they "didn't want to be bothered" with the "unneccessary trouble and expense" to keep their pet's LEGALLY MANDATED vaccinations up to date. And this in an area where the local news puts up a new "homeowner bitten by rabid raccoon/fox/coyote/squirrel/stray dog" story every few weeks between March and November! ! In its own way, the experience has saved me a lot of time, because I never bother reading the Miracle Vaccine to Protect Us from Bird Flu stories.