Boomer Refuses to Get Rabies Shots After Bat Bite, Claims 'My Immune System’s Seen Worse' in the Vietnam War
**By: Your Friendly Neighborhood Cynic**
Look, I get it. Nobody *wants* to get a shot. That’s like saying nobody wants to pay taxes or sit through a four-hour PowerPoint about workplace synergy. But there’s a difference between skipping your flu shot because you’re lazy and playing a high-stakes game of “Will I Die a Horrible, Foaming-at-the-Mouth Death?” with the literal most lethal virus known to humankind.
Meet Carl, a 72-year-old Vietnam vet from Tampa, Florida. Carl is currently the star of his own personal live-streaming disaster because he was bitten by a bat—yes, a bat, the furry little umbrella of doom—and he’s refusing the post-exposure rabies treatment. Why? Because, according to him, “My immune system is a combat veteran. It’s seen Agent Orange, jungle rot, and a few divorces. A little bat juice isn’t gonna take me out.”
Spoiler alert, Carl: Rabies doesn’t care about your war stories. Rabies doesn’t care about your “tough guy” aura or your collection of “I’m Not a Doctor But I Play One in My Truck” bumper stickers. Rabies is the final boss of infectious diseases. It has a 99.9% fatality rate once symptoms show up. To put that in perspective, that’s a worse survival rate than getting hit by a meteor while simultaneously being struck by lightning and attacked by a shark. And the only treatment? A series of shots that, I know, *gasp*, might make your arm a little sore for a day.
But Carl is having none of it. He’s now a local legend in the Facebook group “Tampa Bay Residents Against Government Overreach,” where he posted a photo of the bat bite—which looks like two tiny puncture wounds on his thumb—with the caption, “The VA didn’t make me get shots for leeches in ‘Nam. I’m not starting now.”
Leeches don’t give you rabies, Carl. Leeches are just gross. Rabies is a neurological chainsaw that liquefies your brain from the inside out. It turns you into a panicked, hydrophobic, hallucinating mess who eventually slips into a coma and dies. It’s not a “tough it out with some whiskey and a prayer” situation. It’s a “get your affairs in order and say goodbye to your grandkids” situation.
The story, predictably, has gone viral. Reddit’s r/LeopardsAteMyFace is already setting up a live feed. The comments are a beautiful dumpster fire of medical professionals begging him to reconsider, libertarians cheering him on from a safe distance, and the rest of us just watching in morbid fascination.
“I’ve seen this before,” says Dr. Emily Hart, an infectious disease specialist at Tampa General (who, by the way, probably has the patience of a saint for dealing with this). “We had a guy a few years ago who thought he could ‘pray the rabies away.’ He’s dead. We had another guy who tried to treat it with colloidal silver. He’s dead, but at least he was a pretty shade of blue first. Rabies is not a suggestion. It’s a biological certainty.”
But Carl is dug in. He’s now a folk hero to a certain subset of internet weirdos who think science is a conspiracy cooked up by Big Pharma to sell more… what? Syringes? The post-exposure prophylaxis for rabies costs about $3,800 for the initial dose. That’s not cheap, but it’s significantly cheaper than a funeral, which, I’ll remind you, also typically requires a casket.
The real kicker? Carl’s daughter, Sarah, is absolutely losing her mind. She’s been posting updates on her own social media, begging him to go to the ER. “He says I’m being a ‘snowflake’ and that ‘the media is fear-mongering about bats,’” she wrote. “Dad, the media isn’t fear-mongering. Bats are just naturally terrifying. They’re flying mice with helicopter teeth.”
And she’s not wrong. Bats are the Typhoid Mary of the animal kingdom. They carry rabies, they carry Nipah virus, they carry SARS-like coronaviruses. They are basically fuzzy, winged bioweapons. And while only about 1% of bats actually have rabies, you don’t get to roll the dice on that 1% when the prize is a slow, agonizing death.
The CDC has a protocol for this. It’s very simple: If a bat touches you, you get the shots. If a bat looks at you funny, you get the shots. If you *think* a bat might have breathed within your general vicinity while you were sleeping, you get the shots. It’s not a suggestion. It’s the medical equivalent of “stop, drop, and roll,” except the fire is in your brain.
But Carl is convinced he’s the main character in a movie where the rugged individualist outsmarts the establishment. He’s posted a follow-up video where he’s drinking a Bud Light and holding the bat—which he claims he “neutralized” with a shovel—like a trophy. “See this? This thing’s a coward. It bit me and ran. I’m not scared of a coward. I ate C-rations for three years. This is nothing.”
Carl, you absolute legend of poor decision-making, the bat didn’t run. You killed it with a shovel. That’s like saying you’re tough because you beat a Chihuahua in a fight. And C-rations? That’s not a flex. That’s just admitting you had bad food 50 years ago.
The real question is: How long until Carl starts showing symptoms? The incubation period for rabies is usually 1-3 months. So he’s got a window. A window where he could still get the
Final Thoughts
Having covered public health scares for decades, I’ve learned that the real story isn’t the bat in the attic—it’s the silence that follows a potential exposure. The rabies virus is a merciless clock, and every unvaccinated scratch from a bat is a gamble with a nearly 100% fatality rate that no one should take. Ultimately, this case is a stark reminder that our fear of wildlife often distracts us from the simple, lifesaving duty of post-exposure prophylaxis and rabies awareness.