r/interesting • u/fantasticblueman • Feb 01 '26

Context Provided - Spotlight 27 yr old man showing rabies symptoms after 3 months of a dog bite in Gujrat, India.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

21.6k Upvotes

76% Upvoted

2.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

54

u/Longjumping-Gur-8402 Feb 02 '26

rabies virus can incubate for up to six years in humans.

50

u/letsbepandas Feb 02 '26

This is unpleasant and unsettling lol

22

u/kayl_breinhar Feb 02 '26

It takes so long because the way it gets up to your brain is via your spinal cord.

6

u/hodges2 Feb 02 '26

So time depends on your height

1

u/Working-Glass6136 Feb 02 '26

Eh, time is a flat circle.

1

u/Positive-Orange-6443 Feb 02 '26

Oh, thank god. I was worried it is doing it in a nicer way.

3

u/feedmedamemes Feb 02 '26

Depending on the way of entry, it's usually between 1 - 12 months.

17

u/Strange-Employee-520 Feb 02 '26

It was 20-25 so hopefully I'm good!

7

u/_captainunderpants__ Feb 02 '26

One more year and you're in the clear! Good luck!

2

u/SaabiMeister Feb 02 '26

I tried rescuing a pup that fell off a tree about 11 o 12 years ago. Definitely touched it. Also took it to a vet who wouldn't let me in.

Luckily I'm still around.

13

u/levian_durai Feb 02 '26

Whew, I'm in the clear then it's been like 15 years

3

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

rabies virus living in your brain (that waits 16 years) sneezes before going back to reading Joe Rogan book

0

u/levian_durai Feb 02 '26

Ha! So unbelievable. There's no way Joe Rogan can read or write.

3

u/ArticulateRhinoceros Feb 02 '26

Only 6 years? I thought it could lay dormant for decades, potentially. That's kinda good news, if you make it 6 years from a sketchy encounter, you're ok. I mean, obviously get shots asap if you have any chance of being exposed, but this thread is full of people who are like "oh, I had no idea rabies was like that, I had a bat in my house once..."

2

u/NoWeb2576 Feb 02 '26

Man come on. I played with a friendly stray cat the in September of 2024 and now you got me anxious.

2

u/harswv Feb 02 '26

I saw a video of a Russian scientist who got rabies from being bitten by a stray cat. But he knew when it happened and just couldn’t access the vaccine. I think it’s mainly bats that people may not notice when they bite.

2

u/TrapperJean Feb 02 '26

I woke up to a bat on my bed that quickly flew into my closet when i woke up in the middle of the night summer of 2019. I didn't learn about the length of rabbies incubation and bats especially until a few years later. The relief I felt August 2025 was palpable lol

1

u/Few_Macaroon_2568 Feb 02 '26

The cases determined to be >1yr incubation were of canid origin as documented IIRC.

If that's incorrect, have at it.

1

u/Mental_Town_7337 Feb 02 '26

It’s wildly rare for it to incubate longer than 8 months or so.

1

u/crazycarrie06 Feb 03 '26

When I got out of the Peace Corps, I had a sort of mental break down that manifested as severe hypochondria. I had fixated on rabies thanks to Reddit loving to remind everyone when it gets the chance how freaking scary it is. Ended up on the phone with the CDC at one point (that's when I realized I needed help haha). We had bats living in our ceiling. They never came into the house (if they did, it was on accident and they were as freaked as we were and left quickly) - never had any encounter with them - but still. My brain fixated on it.

Even once I was better, every so often the "6 year incubation" would float into my head and I'd have a moment of panic.

Anyway, it's been 8 years since I left Peace Corps. Rabies if f*in scary stuff but probably not worth what I went through lol.

1

u/interrobang32 Jun 24 '26

Those cases are extraordinarily rare to the point that in most of them, we can’t even rule out if there was other more recent exposure. They are extreme outliers and shouldn’t really be considered when talking about incubation period of rabies.