More dog owners are questioning vaccines like rabies after COVID
More dog owners are questioning vaccines like rabies after COVID
Vaccine skepticism has spread to our pets.
More than half of U.S. dog owners expressed concerns about vaccinating their dogs, including against rabies, according to a new study published Saturday in the journal Vaccine. The study comes as anti-vaccine sentiments among humans have exploded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pets are now often considered to be a member of the family, and their health-care decisions are weighed with the same gravity. But the consequences of not vaccinating animals can be just as dire as humans. Dogs, for example, are responsible for 99% of rabies cases globally. Rabies, which is often transmitted via a bite, is almost always fatal for animals and people once clinical signs appear. A drop in rabies vaccination could constitute a serious public health threat.
In the new study, the authors surveyed 2,200 people and found 53% had some concern about the safety, efficacy or necessity of canine vaccines. Nearly 40% were concerned that vaccines could cause dogs to develop autism, a theory without any scientific merit.
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Welp, looks like rabies is gonna have a huge comeback. I bet there's a huge overlap with antivaxx owners and unleashed pets too.
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It's really sad too.
One interpretation of the cause of this problem is that vaccines are just too effective. No one has polio, not to mention even chicken pox.
A resurgence of rabies (or, god forbid, small pox) will clear that up real quick.
Then again, too much of this planet have been fed a steady diet of propaganda for most of their adult lives.
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I literally saw lady letting fucking hellspawn of a child COVERED IN CHICKEN POX run around barefoot at Aldi a few weeks ago. I was so panicked I didn’t know what to do because I didn’t even see them until I was walking out so I just got out as fast as I could. My wife has never had chickenpox, and adult chickenpox can apparently be much more deadly, so it was definitely kind of terrifying.
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Ahem.
Fwiw the last big smallpox outbreak was in 1962.
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Cats too. I hate that people let cats roam, it's irresponsible and shitty to just let your pet out to do whatever it wants with everyone else's property. And now there are gonna be unvaccinated, rabid cats roaming and infecting it further.
Hey maybe the apocalypse is coming and this is the start of a zombie/aggressive rabies outbreak!
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As the disease progresses, the person may experience delirium, abnormal behavior, hallucinations, hydrophobia (fear of water), and insomnia. The acute period of disease typically ends after 2 to 10 days. Once clinical signs of rabies appear, the disease is nearly always fatal,
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cocks shotgun not if I can help it
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I feel sorry for the dogs that will suffer because of this nonsense.
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You’re going to deny them all that 5G coursing through their veins? Think of the speed increase!
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Babe wake up, 6G vaccines just dropped
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I feel sorry for the humans that will suffer from incurable diseases like rabies because of this nonsense.
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The truly ironic thing is that the fact that vaccines worked so well at eliminating so many horrible diseases is why these chuckle fucks don't think that they need vaccines.
If they never saw a loved one killed or permanently fucked up from disease it must not exist or it's no a big deal. They are completely oblivious to the fact that vaccines are the reason why they never saw the suffering and death first hand.
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The sentiment is different now though around becoming unwell with one of these diseases. They'll argue they caught it from vaccine shedding rather than naturally so it will just make them even more psychotic on the antivax soapbox.
Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for by rocket powering our regression in modern medicine.
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Yeah, I feel like anyone who denies a vaccine should be forced to watch a graphic video about people who suffer the effects of measles, mumps, reubella or rabies or whatever they are wanting to deny and then can make their choice if they want that, or to believe a Baywatch star regurgitate nonsense
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Unfortunately, Herman Caine awards are a thing. There were plenty of honorable mentions where the person caught COVID, went through a long, expensive, and arduous recovery, and they are still staunchly anti-vax. The damage the far right media has done to the world will take at least a generation of aggressive countermeasures to correct.
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Oh, but if this goes on they'll definitely see the effects.
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If you don't vaccinate your pet, you should be disallowed from owning it
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And then they should be spayed or neutered, for responsible population control.
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I believe you mean to spay or neuter the animal, right? Not the pet, but the animal who prevented the pet from receiving the vaccine.
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That is literally the law where I am, an most cities I thought. Dogs are required to have a rabies vaccine.
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That is only enforced if you register your dog with the city. It's required by law to register your pet and pay a yearly fee, plus show vaccination records. But it is only enforced if the police stop you for some reason while you are with your dog and they happen to ask about your dog's registration. If you only walk you dog on leash and never take it anywhere that a cop might talk to you, nobody would ever know your dog wasn't registered. If you never take your dog to daycare while you are on vacation, nobody would ever know your dog didn't have vaccinations.
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...is almost always fatal for animals and people...
That's an understatement. I think there are only one or two documented cases ever where someone started to show symptoms of rabies and lived. If I recall correctly those who did live were given massive doses of the vaccine as the moment symptoms were noticed and were mentally incapacitated the rest of their lives.
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Not quite, the vaccine is only part of it. The Milwaukee Protocol involves putting the patient into a coma and dropping their body temp so low that the virus can't spread (should note that low core temps are why marsupials like opossums are damn near immune) because once symptoms are showing it's actively turning your brain to mush. Between the virus already being present and the coma, brain damage is basically guaranteed despite survival.
Iirc only 29 people recorded as surviving. We should note that rabies has a written record going back to the start of writing. 29, in 4 millennia.
Rabies is scary as fuck y'all. You can get this shit from getting an organ transplant from someone who never knew they were infected after being bitten by a bat while camping last year.
https://youtu.be/kxBIJvNHZg4?si=2MjzGA2caKFIcBcM here's a video that's pretty disturbing if you're wanting to see what dying of rabies looks like. Spoilers, it's awful.
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There's also a lot of disagreement on if the Milwaukee Protocol works or if it's something else entirely that we're just starting to figure out, and if it's worth the risks of things like lock-in syndrome if it won't do anything helpful for most people. Radiolab has a pretty interesting episode about it all
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You can get this shit from getting an organ transplant from someone who never knew they were infected after being bitten by a bat while camping last year.
Reminds me of my favourite episode of Scrubs
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There is radiolab episode about this, highly recommended. A girl survived who was bitten on her toe by inducing a coma and giving her the vaccine. The idea was that slowed the death march of the rabies to the brain and allowed the body enough time to mount a defense. The treatment had not had a very good success rate.
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On the plus side, some of those owners are bound to be bitten.
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Updates on Rabies virus disease: is evolution toward “Zombie virus” a tangible threat?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7975959/
The irony of brain dead anti vaxxers becoming zombies
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Any evolution or opportunity for it through any spread, especially in human adjacent vectors, is super bad news. A respiratory communicable rabies would be a potential "doomsday virus". We really don't want rabies picking up any new tricks.
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I mean... they kinda already are.
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Sure, but with the much bigger minus that rabid dogs are also likely to bite a lot of perfectly innocent people, particularly kids, and even more particularly, kids who have crazy anti-vaxxer parents that might not get them a (human) rabies shot in time to save their life after a dog bite.
(note how many kids die of self-inflected gunshot wounds because their parents are too stupid to keep them safe from those)
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As a kid I remember a rabid dog confronting me in an alley. A cop showed up an shot him dead. You might think I would be traumatized, but actually thought it was kind of cool.
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28 days later...
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Not enough.
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I've recently encountered a cat rescue that rehomes their feral cats without giving them their rabies vaccines and NOT disclosing this. Ask me how I know and am 11 needles deep....they asked me to lie to public health and maintain that rabies isn't actually necessary and I wasn't really put at risk (?!)
It's fucking ludicrous and public health barely responded.
I am all for saving and rehoming ferals but holy hell VACCINATE AGAINST RABIES. The reason it's not as prevalent is BECAUSE OF THE VACCINES.
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This is awful!
Can you complain further up the chain, at a county or state level?
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Sometimes I really hate it here
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Do these people actually want to experience rabies, a disease with 99.9999999999% death rate, for themselves? Well, good luck for them, and natural selection will prevail.
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Unfortunately the dog is probably more likely to bite someone else, not a member of the family that refused to vaccinate him.
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Oh these dumb assholes.
Shakespeare on it:
"All the contagion of the south light on you. You shames of Rome! You herd of boils and plague. [Let us] plaster you o'er, that you may be abhorr'd! Go, further than seen, and one infect another, against the wind another mile!"
This was about plague and dirty people that wouldn't stop dumping their shit in the gutter in front of their houses. He says you dirty fucks, herd of plague, were going to post picture of you on the wall and make fun of you. You should leave town, and then go another mile away, and infect each other.
Savage.
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I agree with your sentiment, but the quote is from Corolanius. Marcius (a Roman general) is cursing his own men for retreating from an assault upon an enemy city. He's very upset.
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Hmmm, no doubt you're correct now that I read it in context. I can't place exactly where I got this notion from and my Google fu is not finding it. It was a piece online somewhere about Shakespearean concepts as to the lives of commoners in his time, including plague, through his works.
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I pay $10 a year to license my dog. My dog has to be rabies vaccinated to get his license. He’s issued a tag with an ID#. The vet has to report his vaccine info. I get a certificate with a vaccine number too. I suppose I’m fortunate to live in an area with this as a requirement but I think it’s pretty easy to get around this too. I live in a metro area. I suppose in more rural areas, licensing and registration of dogs isn’t the norm.
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That's true I think in most of America but it's voluntary, basically. You're supposed to do it but there is no enforcement until your dog gets loose or bites someone and someone asked about your license.
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This would be decried as authoritarianism in many part of the US
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Killing your dog to own the libs
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I give it 7 years before we hear a story about a rash of children getting rabies and dying probably somewhere in the southeast or Midwest from a rabies outbreak.
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Florida.
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I know several people who don't vaccinate their pets. I don't hang out with them if their critters are around. It's not worth the risk.
I had half my face ripped off by a dog when I was a kid, so I take rabies very seriously. I got jumped by 3 raccoons a while ago and went through the rabies vaccine process as a precaution.
I get my animals every vaccine that my vet offers. Gotta protect their furry lil dumb asses
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My cats are 100% indoors, and I still got them all their vaccines. It would be ridiculous not to.
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Exactly. My cats don't go outside at all and they have everything. Who knows what I or my dogs could drag inside on our feet.
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Meanwhile I was thrilled when my vet got the bunny vaccine, which had to be specially imported under special rules from Europe. And I was even more thrilled that a US made alternative just became available because it doesn't involve growing live virus in bun buns. Hell no we don't want RHD2, and IMHO you would have to be insane to withhold that vaccine from your bun buns.
Buns don't get rabies vaccines but I'm perfectly happy to vaccinate my cat against whatever the vet suggests.
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As an autistic, a dog lover and a science guy... I feel so fucking conflicted.
Like, statistically speaking dogs are more likely to bite their owners, making rabies lethal for both the dog and the common sense challenged owners; I'm willing to let the humans die, however the dog is still innocent.
Anyway, I just wish every single conspiracy theorist anti vaccine person gets a very treatable and preventable (via vaccine) disease+infection; no sympathy from me.
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I'm not. As much as I have no sympathy for shitty dog owners, chances are shitty dog owners are gonna keep from doing anything enough that someone innocent may get bit and unknowingly get rabies. That and shitty dog owners seem likely to simply lie about having given a rabies vaccine to their puppers. Literally I want anything and everything to help prevent innocent people (and other dogs) from getting rabies. It's so fucking awful. Even if that includes saving some people from leaving the gene pool that might not deserve to be there.
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These people are more inbred then a pug
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The article does not link the study. It can be found linked from the authors site (https://www.mattmotta.com/publications) here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qmbkv/
Honestly, it's more worth reading than the article. It's 7 pages, not including references and data.
I was wondering who the 2,200 people were. From the study:
Data
Data for this study are derived from a nationally representative online survey of N = 2,200 US adults, conducted between March 30 - April 10, 2023. We administered this study in partnership with YouGov...
...YouGov did this for our study by first pulling a simple random sample of responses from nationally representative US Census data, ...These individuals were then invited to participate in our study.
The firm then corrected for any remaining deviations ... on the basis of respondents’ racial identity, gender identity, age, educational attainment, and 2020 US Presidential vote choice.
Stage 1 Results: The Prevalence and Politicization of CVH
We begin our analysis by considering the prevalence of CVH among dog owners. As Table 3 demonstrates, a large minority of dog owners consider vaccines administered to dogs to be unsafe (37%), ineffective (22%), and/or unnecessary (30%). Correspondingly, we find that a slight majority of dog owners (53%) can be considered to be vaccine hesitant; i.e., because they endorse at least one of these three positions (see: Measures)
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US adults
Can you please start educating your country
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My country? I'm Canadian.
Granted, we're ten years behind the US at most.
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someone has to make the loud ones sit down and shut up first
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Problem is our country tells each of our 50 states to do the education thing... so that leads to a huge range of outcomes for the unlucky students born into the wrong state.
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You can't make someone learn when they're determined to remain ignorant. So no.
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I never watched it and even I know about Old Yeller. This is just animal cruelty with how well known the disease is.
edit: Also isn't Rabies also a disease that targets the brain? Like the mother of all trades. Autism or Rabies /s (and yes I know one of those wouldn't even happen)
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Rabies doesn't just "target" the brain. It fucking nukes that shit. Untreated rabies is one of the scariest diseases that exists. Once you're feeling symptoms, you are 99% fucked to a slow incredibly awful death.
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More like 99.99999999999999999999999999999.....well, you get the point. In all of human history, there have only been a handful of confirmed survivors of rabies. It's the most lethal disease known to man.
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I can precisely follow the Stupid Logic and I hate it.
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Know the common carrier of rabies in your area.
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There should definitely be laws about vaccinating dogs against rabies.
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I think there are? At least I think there is in PA.
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Every state in the union except Kansas has a law on the books, though New York seems to have some technicality going on.
http://powershotsmn.com/rabies_laws_by_state.html
Many do allow medical exemption though, so these nuts have a loophole in many states.
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Thankfully my dog only really interacts with other dogs at places that require vaccinations.
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I have extended family members who have fake COVID vaccine cards. How tough do you think it will be to fake a dog's status, or even find an insane veterinarian who is willing to sign on the dotted line for a little moolah?
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More people are dumbshits
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Just how stupid can we really get? It seems to be an endless journey outpacing the previous dumbest thing.
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We are starting to regress to a pre Louis Pasteur point now
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This is a problem that’s going to solve itself as soon as their dogs get rabies.
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Whelp, that finishes my internetting for the day.
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It's kinda good, we need mechanisms which can keep natural selection on its track ...
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because the AR15 and the attack dog aren't enough danger to have around the house, they also need rabid attack dogs.. it makes sense.. it's an upgrade to home security..
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So they want to play with their dogs life like they do witb their unvaccinated kids?
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????????????????????????
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No doubt our pets are realistically over vaccinated, just like people, but fucking Rabies? That's really not one to gamble with, too realistic of a chance of it happening.
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At least in Canada, rabies vaccines are legally mandated
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Dog owners too dumb to pick up after their own dog's poop wonder if they even need to take their dog to the vet.
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If only we can tell their dogs to not bite people for no reason...
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I'd be surprised if 40% of the dogs I've met weren't already autistic.
Regardless, maybe we can redirect any newly-available resources from this to getting a rabies vaccine for humans?
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Isn't there a rabies vaccine for humans? It's given asap if it's suspected that you've been bitten by an infected animal. It's generally only given preventatively to people who are at high risk. I don't know why that is.
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You can get it if you want: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/rabies.html
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this headline is meant to get a rise out of readers. are these numbers greater than they used to be? we can't say they're on the rise without a prior measurement
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Maybe don’t stop reading at the headline then, or better yet read the actual fucking paper they reference.
If you truly cared the answers are there
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the number is not in the article op posted. op didn't post a link to the paper, my comment is on the article not the paper.
your tone sucks. people don't deserve to be spoken to that way and your actions have consequences. do better.
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