Rabies is in my top three fears, maybe even number one.

Same. I went on a road trip one summer a few years ago, and we decided to take a long detour through the Appalachian trail for part of the drive.

We had all the windows down and the sunroof open everywhere else outside of the mountains. Anyway, we were going down this really narrow back road, seeing like 1 or 2 other cars every 45 mins to an hour, and eventually got to a point where we had to drive through a really old tunnel.

My first thought was, what if a bat flies in the car lmao. I demanded we roll up all the windows and shut the sunroof before we go through. My husband made fun of me and said I was being ridiculous. I probably was, but there’s way too many documented cases about people who were out in the wilderness, got a tiny bat scratch, didn’t even realize it or think twice about it, then weeks or months later died a slow horrible death. Even if you spend your last days in a hospital there’s nothing they can do except try to make you comfortable (which seems pretty impossible unless they just place you into a medically induced coma).

I also worked with a girl that grew up in Vietnam and said there were multiple times she got bit by stray dogs and had to get rabies shots when she was a kid. I grew up in the sticks always playing with stray cats and dogs, and never thought twice about it back then. Definitely wouldn’t be taking the risk now.

Anyway, tldr, some people seem to be under the impression a fear of encountering rabies is like a fear of someday encountering quicksand. I’ll take my chances being ridiculous, especially after reading the article and learning we’ve now got a fucking rabies outbreak to worry about on top of everything else in the U.S.