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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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I just re-learned about rabies, in the last 10 days:

  • if you're symptomatic, you're a dead man walking
  • symptoms take weeks to months to present
  • symptoms include hydrophobia, which is an intense thirst combined with your musculoskeletal system refusing to accept water (via the nervous system)
  • IV fluids for some reason do not ameliorate
  • "foaming at the mouth" is related to increased saliva production combined with an inability to swallow said fluids
  • zombie-like symptoms including an instinct to bite others
  • transmitted primarily via saliva
  • zoonotic reservoirs are mostly bats and rodents, with dogs as the bridge to humans
  • very few canine or human cases in countries like USA
  • a really shit way to go
  • less prevalent but more scary than I thought

There's a reason that even us lazy interns in a government hospital in India didn't fuck around with jabbing our patients who got so much as scratched by a stray cat with their shots. And we chased people who suffered road traffic accidents out onto the streets, as soon as we were reasonably confident they wouldn't die as soon as they left.

If you watch archival footage of the rare cases caught on video, it's a horrible way to go, the only way to ease their passing is to sedate them into oblivion.

I'm glad I've never seen a real case, even India isn't so backward that a normal doctor, even in a rural area, can expect to see one.

Probably the worst thing bats have done for us, COVID notwithstanding.

Do you know why IV fluids fail to hydrate? I am only going off wikipedia here, and maybe errantly...

The short version is that it gives you a very bad brain infection and then you die (encephalomyelitis, if you like). What actually results in death is as usual more complicated than expected but that's the short version.

If you scroll to the "pathophysiology" section of the below article (accessible for me without a login) it should be pretty understandable even without specific training. It also mentions the whole hydrophobia thing.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448076/

Rhabdoviridae

Interesting, is this related to the rhabdo that Crossfitters get? Rhabdomyalysis? Something to do with kidneys and hydration?

The article is ungated for me, FYI

Rhabdomyolysis is essentially a process where you work out too much and one of the good parts of that (muscles breaking down, which leads to better muscles in the long run) becomes excessive and overwhelms your kidneys. This generally occurs with very excessive workouts like a marathon or people going all in on CrossFit, but in the case of poor kidney function or fitness it can happen with milder activity (and hydration is a component as you mention). Importantly doesn't need to be "exercise" - psych patients who are restrained and on PCP can get it from fighting the restraints, if someone has their arm run over by a truck they might get it. The word is from Greek - "Rhabdo" "Myo" (Muscle) "Lysis" (Breakdown). Rhabdo more generally means "rod" but in this case species "striated muscle" which is the type of muscle we except to be causing Rhabdo by breaking down.

In the case of the rabies it's a rhabdovirus because it's sort of rod shaped, which is a boring but common way of naming shit in medicine. Many bacteria are called "bacilliform" because they are rod shaped (with that being Latin for rod).

It's not something I've thought about, but after looking it up, it seems what kills them isn't a lack of fluid, per se, but pretty much every organ in the body shutting down.