Doc - glad you survived that encounter with the "warm blooded Great White Shark" with no bites during the virus' latent stages (though it sounds like for that beasty would be ornery enough to exhibit symptoms and still survive for a good long time).
The variable (oftentimes long) incubation stage of rabies suggests answers to questions I had about how infected mammals survived from one season to the other. You would think that winter would kill off a whole crop of infected animals, thereby reducing the spread of rabies and possibly exstinguishing the disease in certain regions. Raccoons, for instance, are ordinarily hardy and oppurtunistic critters. A raccoon in the final stages of rabies may be on its way out (though its carcass might remain infectious for a time afterwards) and vulnerable to changing weather but one with the virus incubating in it would retain the strength required to survive even a particularly brutal winter. Thus, animals infected in mild weather seasons this year would be deadly a few seasons from now.
Jeff
The variable (oftentimes long) incubation stage of rabies suggests answers to questions I had about how infected mammals survived from one season to the other. You would think that winter would kill off a whole crop of infected animals, thereby reducing the spread of rabies and possibly exstinguishing the disease in certain regions. Raccoons, for instance, are ordinarily hardy and oppurtunistic critters. A raccoon in the final stages of rabies may be on its way out (though its carcass might remain infectious for a time afterwards) and vulnerable to changing weather but one with the virus incubating in it would retain the strength required to survive even a particularly brutal winter. Thus, animals infected in mild weather seasons this year would be deadly a few seasons from now.
Jeff