The patient had the organ transplanted at a hospital in Ohio in December and died in January, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Lynn Sutfin said.
A subsequent investigation that also involved the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ohio Department of Health determined the patient got rabies from the donated organ. Sutfin did not specify which organ was transplanted.
Does this mean that whoever dontated the organ also died from rabies without having been accurately diagnosed, or does it mean that someone was carrying rabies?
If someone died of rabies, it would certainly be known that it was rabies. The symptoms are pretty obvious and it’s not likely it would be mistaken for anything else.
More likely, they were infected and died of some other cause before symptoms started showing, which can take as little as two weeks or potentially over a year.
There’s even some evidence that it can be longer. I found one that was a 6 year incubation.
Jesus H. Christ, that’s daunting…
Yeah, its a really crazy virus. If you get bit or scratched by a mammal, that you don’t know for certain is vaccinated, get the vaccine.
Agreed, same deal as with tetanus. The last time that I got cut by rusty metal and went to the hospital, the intake nurses seemed annoyed with me for showing up with such a minor injury (two stitches needed only). When the MD checked my records, they told me that it was a good thing I’d come in for the stitches and tetanus shot, because my previous one’s span of effect would have ended at a few months earlier. You can’t take this shit for granted, if you blow it off or delay treatment it could kill you. No lockjaw for me, thank you very much.
But also, tetanus is commonly misunderstood. Scapes and scratches are extremely unlikely to result in tetanus, regardless of what causes it. Rust isn’t any more likely to transmit tetanus.
Tetanus is an anaerobic microbe that can only really survive in deep cuts and punctures where air isn’t able to reach the wound. The spores are basically everywhere… But the spores only bloom and become dangerous when they come into contact with blood. Once they bloom, oxygen will kill them. So you don’t need to worry about it for surface-level scratches and scrapes, because the air will kill off any blooms. The only reason it is commonly associated with rust is because one of the more common puncture wounds is from stepping on rusty things.
Huh, interesting. Thanks for the info, I was under the misconception that it was directly tied to the rusty metal itself.
Anything deep enough to warrant stitches should absolutely be treated in a hospital imo.
