Health officials are working to alert hundreds of people in dozens of states and several countries who may have been exposed to rabies in bat-infested cabins in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park over the past few months.
As of Friday, none of the bats found in some of the eight linked cabins at Jackson Lake Lodge had tested positive for rabies.
But the handful of dead bats found and sent to the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie for testing were probably only a small sample of the likely dozens that colonized the attic above the row of cabins, Wyoming State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist said.
It’s not an airborne disease though. You have to actually be bitten by a bat in order to become infected just being in the same room as them isn’t going to do it.
Bats don’t bite people as a general rule, even vampire bats tend to ignore humans, so if one did it would be noteworthy enough that you would probably do something about it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/02/480414566/bats-in-the-bedroom-can-spread-rabies-without-an-obvious-bite
A bat can bite you in your sleep (more likely to bite a human if rabid) and you may not even know you were bitten because they have tiny teeth.
Definitely worth notifying everyone that could have came in contact.
I’m aware of all of that. But it’s still necessary to assume the worst case for the past visitors since if it happened without one’s knowledge (while sleeping in the cabin, for instance), the only sign would be the onset of symptoms, at which point it’s far too late to do anything. Hence why rabies fucking sucks.
And to be clear, I have nothing against bats. I know it’s not a sinister bat-plot to infect humans with rabies. It’s just how things are, and precautions need to be taken.
Let me guess… Some of your best friends are bats, huh? So sus 😤
It might not be airborne. I read a paper years ago but can’t find it that a person who was in a cave known for a large bat population (I can’t remember of they were some kind of researcher or cave explorer) and they contracted rabies even though the were never bitten. They medical people figured the person could only have gotten infected via airborne particles from guano or bat urine, but it is the rare exception of that happening as the virus does not survive well at all outside the body.