5 Lethal Diseases You Would Totally Mistake For The Flu

Published November 23, 2014
Updated May 6, 2020

Rabies

Flu Rabies

Source: YouTube

If you live in a country that’s far enough along to have Internet service, it’s a fair bet that your ideas about rabies mostly come from Old Yeller. In the public imagination, you get rabies when a dog bites you, and then your nephew—who may or may not have had to grow up and be the man of the house after his Pa died fightin’ Indians—has to chain you to a tree for three days to make sure you don’t go berserk and start biting everyone.

If you do, then he has to learn the meaning of manhood by shooting you himself while his Ma . . . who knows. Washes something? Disney wasn’t real clear on that.

In reality, you’d be chained to that tree for quite some time. According to the Mayo Clinic, the incubation period for rabies can be as long as one year, and once you develop symptoms they are—you guessed it—flu-like. Then it hijacks your nervous system, turns you into a drooling mess, and “almost always” kills you.

author
Richard Stockton
author
Richard Stockton is a freelance science and technology writer from Sacramento, California.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.