What's a little rabies between best friends?

One point I probably should have emphasized more in previous feral disinformation posts is that while some of these effects may be big and obvious, they are often indirect and never simple. That is the nature of this particular beast.

The post-covid anti-vax movement is one of the best examples of how disinformation goes feral. Originally, attempts to deny or at least minimize the threat from the pandemic was straightforward propaganda and disinformation designed to prevent the outbreak from damaging Donald Trump's chances in 2020. As time progressed, however, the Republican party and conservative media lost control of the narrative and it took on the life of its own, to the point where when Trump finally had perhaps the one big accomplishment of his administration (Operation Warp Speed), the anti-mask/anti-vax movement had grown so strong that some of his strongest far-right supporters such as Alex Jones and Candice Owen attacked him for taking credit for it.

Now, the movement that was primarily about attacking anti-covid measures has metastasized, often with disturbing results and in unexpected directions. So far, debunked concerns haven't greatly lowered vaccinations, at least not in this story, but it is clearly pushing people in that direction.

Pien Huang  reporting for NPR.

But Marabito considers the current vaccination guidelines "excessive." She's one of many pet owners with "canine vaccine hesitancy," a phrase coined in a recent study led by the Boston University School of Public Health and published in the journal Vaccine. The study found that 53% of U.S. dog owners surveyed question whether the rabies vaccine is safe, whether it works, or whether it's useful.

The researchers sought to quantify a sentiment they were seeing in their work as veterinarians.

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That around half of all dog owners are skeptical about the rabies vaccine is "very disturbing" to Lori Teller, a veterinarian at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and past president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. "The rabies vaccine has been around for decades and it is so incredibly safe, especially when you consider the risk of death," she says.

Rabies is nearly always fatal if it advances to the point where symptoms appear.

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Of the approximately 24 million dogs that are vaccinated against rabies each year, "the vast majority ... have no adverse reactions to the vaccine," he wrote in an email, "There are only a very small number of severe adverse reactions per year (~2.4 per 1,000,000 vaccinated) and, even with those, it's difficult to definitively attribute these reactions to vaccination."

In comparison, Wallace sees great benefit to rabies vaccinations. He analyzed rabies data and estimated that they prevent nearly 300 dogs from getting infected with rabies per year, in turn preventing more than 100 human deaths and saving more than $3 million in treatment costs.

Not vaccinating against rabies could lead to your dog dying if they get infected – or in some cases – if they bite someone, Teller from Texas A&M says: "There is a real likelihood that animal control could euthanize your dog and test it for rabies because human health is going to supersede animal health at that point," she says.

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"The suffering and fear caused by it are so great that they make this the most dreaded of all diseases," wrote the authors of an article from 1928 in the American Journal of Public Health. In the early 1900s, thousands of pets and farm animals caught it each year, and dozens of people died from it.

After decades of concerted public health efforts, the rabies situation in the U.S. was brought under control in the 1960's, and remains so — meaning most human deaths are prevented. Each year, a few hundred pet cases are reported, and one to three people die from it.

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Globally, rabies is still considered "one of the most feared infectious diseases worldwide," according to health researchers. The disease kills around 59,000 people each year, mostly in countries in Asia and Africa where the disease is endemic in dogs.

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Motta sees pet vaccine skepticism as a "spillover effect" from a rise in human vaccine hesitancy – related to the skepticism towards COVID vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement against childhood shots. "We see in our research that people who hold negative views toward human vaccinations are precisely the types of people who hold negative views toward vaccinating their pets."

While many dog owners have some skepticism towards the rabies vaccine, the shot is required by law in most places and 84% of the Mottas' survey respondents said they're still giving it to their pets. That's about the same as it was a decade ago, the CDC's Wallace says, according to a separate study conducted then.

Health officials say the margin is slim. The World Health Organization and CDC both recommend maintaining at least a 70% dog vaccination rate, to prevent rabies outbreaks. If the rate dips below that, parts of the U.S. could start seeing more deadly rabies cases in people and pets, Wallace says.