I only travel domestically, mainly in Appalachia, sometimes to adjacent regions like New England, upstate New York, and Michigan when Appalachia is too hot. This is something I will never ever have to worry about. America is a big place.

>>2914053
Yes, Taiwan, 2014. I was walking from the MRT to my apartment late one night. I saw something on my left side and suddenly there was a bat gnawing on my hand. Then the bat flapped off rather drunkenly. A normal healthy bat zooms around the streetlight posts in a circle, eating all the bugs that are attracted to the lights. This one acted like it had just guzzled a couple of bottles of vodka, it was weaving all over the fucking place. I immediately grabbed a cab and went to the only hospital I knew was open that late to demand rabies vaccine.

This was fortuitous, because NTUH, the one I went to, is one of only four hospitals in Taiwan that even stock the vaccine. The other three are all far away from Taipei in other parts of the country.

Something fun to know: until 2012, Taiwan believed itself to be "rabies free" like Bongistan and Australia. Then they discovered rabies in a species they call "ferret badgers". The rabies strain was tested and found to have originated in bats.

Despite this, in 2014, Taiwan's hospitals absolutely fucking refused to treat me for rabies. Sure, the ferret badgers had "bat rabies" but that doesn't mean any bats in Taiwan have rabies, obviously the ferrets were infected by a mad scientist or maybe divine intervention, they couldn't possibly have caught it from an actual infected bat.

So I had to pay for everything out of pocket even though I was on NIH, first the initial vaccine injection on the night of the attack at the ER, and then on Monday when the clinics opened up I had a hilariously long argument with one of the many incompetent quacks in Taiwan's medical system about getting rabies immunoglobulin (RIG, HRIG for the human version, ERIG for the equine (horse) derived version).

(continued)

>>2914053
>>2914057 (continued)
>NIH
Oops I meant NHI, Taiwan's National Health Insurance scam.

The argument went sort of like this:
me: I was bitten by a bat, it was clearly diseased, I need the full post-exposure vaccine series, and the U.S. CDC website says I have to be injected with RIG as well.
quack: Taiwan is rabies free, RIG isn't covered under NIH rules.
me: Taiwan is no longer rabies-free, the ferret-badgers down around Taowhatever were found to have it a couple of years ago. CDC guidelines state that RIG has to be given within the first 72 hours or else it's pointless, and in cases of bat bits it's essential.
quack: RIG isn't covered under NHI rules.
me: look, the bat was sick and attacked me, it's probably rabies. I need RIG.
quack: RIG isn't covered under NHI rules. Taiwan is a poor country [side note: it's something like 10th richest in the world] and cannot afford to be wasting its resources like that.
me: I need RIG. If it's just a matter of cost I'll fucking pay it myself.
quack: Yes, you should definitely get RIG after being bitten by a sick bat here, I would definitely do it myself if I were. Let me go get it from cold storage and start warming it up. You'll need to wait about an hour.
me: what the fuck

Anyway, I finally got my RIG, not sure if HRIG or ERIG, went into shock, had to be put on oxygen for about half an hour while half a dozen nurses huddled around me wondering if they were going to have to put me on life support, and eventually started feeling better and went out.

As an aside, IDK if it was the coming-out-of-shock or the oxygen or what, but I felt high as fuck for hours afterward. My vision is usually blurry but was crystal-clear for the rest of that day.

Anyway, I got the remaining vaccine injections (five, given on days 0, 3, 7, 14, and 28).

About three months later I started feeling the weirdest sensations in the back of my skull on the inside. It felt like dime-sized patches of my brain were going numb.

(continued)

>>2914053
>>2914057
>>2914058
So after maybe a week or ten days those weird sensations subsided. I've never felt anything like them either before or since.

I remain convinced that (1) yes it was rabies, (2) yes I got infected, and (3) those sensations were from a barely-stopped infection.

I will also note that during those three months, I developed a slight difficulty in swallowing, which has not improved since then. Loss of control of throat muscles is one of the symptoms of rabies, and why it used to be called "hydrophobia" -- animals would be thirsty but couldn't swallow water and would choke when they tried, so they showed that "aversion to water" sign. Yet another reason I remain convinced I did in fact get infected.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

>>2914057
>>2914058
Man that's scary as fuck, that's also my concern that if I get bit some thirdie doctor will fuck around and either inject me with the wrong stuff or refuse to do it

>>2914066
In fairness, he wasn't actually refusing to give it to me, he was just refusing to have NHI cover it and made me pay out of pocket.

It was fortunate that I was so insistent on following the CDC guidelines. If I hadn't kept insisting on RIG he would have let me go without it. Given that I did end up showing some signs that it probably really was rabies, I think without it I might have been fucked.

If you're in some turd world shithole just bribe the quack.

I should also note that, as an expat living and working in Taiwan for years, I found NHI to be completely fucking useless. Taiwanese doctors seem to feel that it is imperative to deny services to foreign devils. Every long-term expat I knew there had had extreme negative experiences. One guy started frequently vomiting, and the quacks just told him to take two aspirin and let them know in a couple of days if he wasn't feeling better. They did that repeatedly every time he went back. His wife finally had to call in favors with friends to get a doctor to take it seriously. Turns out he had intestinal adhesions, had to undergo surgery to unfuck them, and he spent the next month in a hospital recovering from the mess. If he hadn't been married to someone able to exert outside pressure on the quacks, he would have died within a few more days of being ignored. A friend of mine had to pull the plug on another expat who had been in an accident that resulted in his brain being exposed to open air through a fractured skull; the hospital simply ignored the guy for so long that his brain dried out.

Generally speaking, any time something serious came up (and I had shitty luck there and had multiple serious problems happen), I had to fly to Thailand for treatment.

>>2914053
Stray dogs are a fucking plague. After visiting third world shitholes, I've gone from finding them annoying to just wanting anything that isn't small enough to be punted into oblivion to just be exterminated. It's annoying as fuck seeing people online cry because some brown thirdie kicked a heckin pupperino that tried to bite them. The only reason people love the idea of stray dogs is because first world countries round up strays and kill them before they become a nuisance. Thirdies love dogs too much and it ends up biting them in the ass, quite literally. Just gas them all.

>>2914121
you sound like a complete psychopath

>>2914124
kind of explains how asians see westerners - as stray dogs - and treat them accordingly

>>2914054
Rabies absolutely does exist in the US, and the resulting treatment will be ruinous to your funds. Or you can just rawdog it and take the risk. I came very close to getting chomped in the foot while bicycling in Ayutthaya Thailand. The dog bit down so hard on my shoe that it pierced a hole in the canvas upper, then circled around when I stopped to confront it. It didn't bark at all, looked a little sickly. From that day I vowed to never get caught off guard by a dog again.

>>2914124
He is
>>2914121
Dogs come in many different personalities just like humans. Some dogs are full of hate just like you and should be locked up for life the moment they act out (just like you).

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>>2914124
Our countries round up dogs and give them lethal injection as a standard protocol. Don't blame me. That's the only way to keep the streets clean.

>>2914058
lol they're just like canadian doctors
they defer to the cost of the treatment first before the appropriateness
good to know taiwan is a niggercattle country as well

>>2914164
>lol they're just like canadian doctors
Do they also recommend suicide?

>>2914164
>defer to the cost of the treatment first

You commie parasites want free unneeded healthcare

>>2914124
>>2914143
No, he isn't. Feral strays are a serious problem in shithole countries. Hell, even in the U.S. we've lately had a few deaths of people being mauled by feral packs, because so many people are abandoning their violent shitbulls rather than putting them down. The "rescues" are completely full of these unadoptable vicious garbage dogs and the shelter workers intentionally lie about the dog's breeds -- "he's a lab mix!" -- to trick stupid people into adopting them.

One guy I e-know went to a shelter to get a dog for his kids, and they talked him into a half-ACD-half-shitbull dog by calling it a "red heeler mix". Yeah, red heeler mixed with shitbull. Anyway, the dog promptly tried to devour his daughter so he returned it to the shelter. And the shelter undoubtedly will try to foist it off on some other unwitting idiot who doesn't recognize shitbull genetics when he sees them.

>>2914173
>so he returned it to the shelter.

What an evil coward

>>2914173
i live in malaysia anon, the stray dog problem here is as big as pretty much anywhere else you can think of
i guess the dogs count as "feral" but they are generally scared of humans. of course sometimes there are problems when they are desperate, they steal food, get into fights when they are scared or defending their babies etc
unfortunately there is nothing in malaysia that the government can't make worse and the stray problem is a political issue because of the fucking muslims. they could solve it humanely with something like a trap/neuter/release type scheme but instead they recruit volunteers to round up the strays and send them off to be killed. if they round up a few genuine pets in the process then too bad for the owner
usually the volunteers make ICE look like a bunch of tree hugging hippies. recently there was a news story about a person who got into a fight with a dog catcher and they basically ended up using the dog as a tug of war rope and it was killed. both the catcher and the dog's defender were in court on abuse charges. of course this also ended up being a race/political issue
poor fucking dogs. i'm not a huge fan (i've had some cats that were killed by stray dogs) but its not their fault they ended up on the streets
anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk

>>2914057
>>2914058
What the actual fuck.
There is no such thing as "rabies-free" in reality. Never ever. What countries and health organizations mean by "rabies-free" is no confirmed cases of the classical strain in a long time, the by far most common type spread around constantly by dogs and other canines. Old world bats commonly carry a shitload of different strains of lyssaviruses that are just as lethal. The only practical difference is that their transmission to humans is very rare because bats are not dumbass street strays, hence "rabies-free country". Otherwise rabies is endemic in bats absolutely everywhere and a bite always requires PEP even in "rabies-free" countries. What the actual fuck were these greedy quacks doing trying to sentence you to death, that's all rabies 101.

I'm not worried about rabies, I have a strong immune system.

>>2914153
Is that Windex?

>>2914176
Agreed. Should've just killed it and saved everyone the trouble. It's nobody's responsibility to care for dangerous dogs, much less let them live. Treat them like any other pest infesting a town.

>>2914176
>>2914143
Dog lovers are subhuman

>>2914061
to be fair, your headache or paresthesia could have been caused by a variety of things, maybe the vaccine or IG. Or something unrelated, strokes, inmtercranial hypertension, a tumor, high blood pressure. You could go to a neurologist and get an MRI.

It's the same in thailand. You will only get free postexposure vaccine but pay out of pocket for IG. which many thais don't because they are poor and eventually die miserably.

>>2914319
>inmtercranial
i mean intracranial

>every animal bite is heckin lethal goy!
>be sure to run to the hospital straight away for your expensive shots any time you get scratched or nibbled!

One of the most effective ongoing psyops in modern history btw.

>>2914343
you only need to this one in your life. either when you get bit an animal suspected having rabies or before you travel to a region where there is some chance you can get rabies. for example veterinarians or bat researchers should be vaccinated

>>2914343
yeah you are absolutely right
you can increase your natural immunity to rabies by getting bitten by a small dog with rabies first then gradually moving on to bigger dogs with rabies

>>2914182
>There is no such thing as "rabies-free" in reality.
I mean, what was especially ridiculous is that Taiwan was 100% guaranteed no longer rabies-free since they actually FOUND a spreading problem of bat rabies in ferret badgers in 2012. And where do they think the bat rabies that was infecting the ferret badgers CAME from???!

>>2914319
>You could go to a neurologist and get an MRI.
And what would that have told me? The only way to test whether someone has rabies is to remove their brain and do PCR on it to find any signs of virus. I wasn't exactly willing to have my brain removed for destructive testing.

>It's the same in thailand. You will only get free postexposure vaccine but pay out of pocket for IG. which many thais don't because they are poor and eventually die miserably.
I didn't get the vaccines for free either, but at least they were only $60 per.

I paid $430 per at Walgreens two years ago to get re-immunized (because I'm stuck dealing with my geriatric senile mother, and her condo building has bats in the attic space that somehow get trapped in the walls and fall down into the garage level and sometimes even the mailboxes, I shit you not), it's probably $500 for a booster, I really have to get my ass in gear and go there to get the booster.

>>2914343
>what's the worst that could happen, you could die horribly
ngmi

>>2914178
>just TNR the poor doggos
I really don't understand people like you. If someone wants to adopt a stray, great; if not, just kill it. Feral dogs are dangerous even if they're neutered.

Taiwan had shitloads of "community dogs" too. I only ever encountered one that was vicious (if I'd known about xylitol back then I would have killed it), but a friend of mine liked to go hiking in the wilderness areas and sometimes encountered dangerous packs. They destroy wildlife, occasionally attack people, and can be a rabies threat.

My mom was an ER nurse for 50+ years. She saw kids who had been cut in half in car accidents, people skinned alive in motorcycle accidents, gun shot wounds to the face, people who had body parts blown off by grenades in Vietnam and all kinds of crazy stuff. She said the worst death she had ever seen was a guy who got bit by a rabid dog in the Philippines and got rabies. She said his death was so prolonged, so painful, so agonizing, that it shocked even her. It took him 2 weeks of foaming at the mouth with constant seizures until he finally died. He might have lived longer, but no one would go near him.

>>2914475
>My mom was an ER nurse for 50+ years

Start your dumb story with an obvious lie. Smdh

>>2914418
>I really don't understand people like you.
probably because you're lacking in human empathy anon
most stray dogs are not dangerous, they are timid, scared and starving. leave them alone and they generally won't bother you.
anyway i looked up the details, here (malaysia) there are a few cases of rabies but they are generally in sarawak (borneo) where there were a couple of cases this year of people getting bitten but not seeking medical treatment afterwards.

>>2914053
>Have you ever had a rabies scare
yes
in Sri Lanka
got bit by a dog
had the vaccine prior though
reached a hospital ~8h later and got the post exposure treatment

when I was in Kenya like a decade ago
I've met a tourist / aid worker
who actually died of rabies a few month later
a very rare case
but still

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>>2914490
Empathy gets 59000 people dead from rabies each year. Letting dogs run around your town is no different than letting wild bears or venomous cobras prowl around in town. It’s easy to say that when you live in a country where people already eliminated most of them decades ago so you can pretend it’s always been safe. The reality is your parents’ generation went around scooping up every single dog they found and killing them because people were dropping left and right from rabies deaths, and those without rabies were being mutilated by dogs.

And dogs are an introduced species that destroy wildlife. They kill animals like deer and endangered species. Pretty disgusting how you have zero empathy for rare species but instead prioritize spreading a diseased and aggressive species everywhere on earth. It’s a brown mindset. My country is free of wild dogs because we round them up, send them to the pound, then inject them with poison. Rabies has been eliminated and that saves countless lives. Plus small mammals don’t have to worry about being killed by mutts.

>>2914538
>It’s a brown mindset

Exactly. Stray dogs, barking dogs, dogs that bite>>>>>straight to the gas chamber.

>>2914569
Simply existing should never be grounds for extermination. Dogs and humans have always coexisted. I'm not even a dog lover, but I believe that peaceful dogs should be free to roam wherever they like. Just like I like to roam as a peaceful traveler. Aggressive dogs should be culled, however. Beatings and stone throwing only worsen the problem.

>>2914490
I've got plenty of empathy. I like dogs, generally speaking. Leaving half-starving dogs running around loose is dangerous to everyone and is shitty for the dogs. They get hit by cars, they get diseases, they attack people and pets and wildlife. Either take them in to your own home and feed them, or turn them over to "rescues" and "shelters", or put them down.

>>2914645
And who and how is going to triage them? That cute sleepy little pooch can turn into a batshit insane territorial gangbanger the moment the sun sets.
Nevermind the fact that rabies does not care about the dog's attitude.

>>2914645
Yeah, let's just put sharks in swimming pools. Most sharks don't kill kids. And once they're in the swimming pool, they're just existing. You can't get rid of them. Those swimming pool sharks need empathy the same way dogs running amok in human cities do.

>>2914488
She went into the Air Force as an ER nurse during the Vietnam war and still works part time in the ER today. You do the math.