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, just enjoying the cool fresh air bc it was too disgustingly hot everywhere else outside of the mountains to roll them down. 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 narrow tunnel like this one:

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 went through, and my husband made fun of me and said I was being ridiculous. I probably was, but there’s way too many documented cases of 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 because of rabies. Even if you spend your last days in a hospital there’s nothing they can really do by the time you’re showing symptom except try to make you comfortable (which is probably 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, but never thought twice about it back then. Definitely wouldn’t be taking that 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 and overly safe to avoid it. Especially after reading the article and learning we’ve now got a fucking rabies outbreak to worry about on top of everything else going on in the U.S.