The risk of rabies is high in South Africa where the disease - the deadliest on earth - is endemic. Vaccination is your best protection against rabies.
I hadn’t put two and two together like that. What inspired all this was someone compared rabies to mononucleosis. Both are spread through saliva, but it was said during the comparison that we always think of that being rabies’ signature while in the case of mono it’s seen as an obligatory bodily fluid bonus in addition to the fact that mono is in the STD family, having to do with the fact that it’s normal for STD’s to be spread exclusively via bodily fluids, the logic being one should then think back to rabies and think “well of course it’s spread through bites, that’s the obligatory way something can be spread”, the only differences being rabies just happens to compel mammals to bite each other (hence us associating it with the saliva signature) and mononucleosis doesn’t typically kill anyone.
Everything’s an STD if you try hard enough.
I hadn’t put two and two together like that. What inspired all this was someone compared rabies to mononucleosis. Both are spread through saliva, but it was said during the comparison that we always think of that being rabies’ signature while in the case of mono it’s seen as an obligatory bodily fluid bonus in addition to the fact that mono is in the STD family, having to do with the fact that it’s normal for STD’s to be spread exclusively via bodily fluids, the logic being one should then think back to rabies and think “well of course it’s spread through bites, that’s the obligatory way something can be spread”, the only differences being rabies just happens to compel mammals to bite each other (hence us associating it with the saliva signature) and mononucleosis doesn’t typically kill anyone.