Gluttony and the guillotine

If you live in the continental United States and get bitten by a bat, or a raccoon, or a fox, your doctor will probably advise you to go and get rabies shots. Rabies isn’t common, but it’s common enough that about 100,000 people go through the preventative protocol every year. This process is no joke. First you do a PCR test, then you get injected with immunoglobin at every site where the skin is punctured, and then you undergo a series of four vaccine shots over the course of two weeks. Side effects of these drugs include soreness, headaches, nausea and dizziness. While this might sound bad, it’s a lot less bad than catching rabies, which starts by giving you flu-like symptoms and a tingling sensation, before swelling the brain, making you terrified of water, and causing explosive anxiety and confusion until it completely overtakes your nervous system and paralyzes you until you cannot breathe. The fatality rate for those who display clinical symptoms is 100%. These rabies protocols…