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Sounds like it truly stinks, plus the rats present a concern of rabies (100% fatal), and Malaria is also genuinely fucked up.I'm not sure that I can even begin to describe the triple canopy jungle, the monsoon rains, rice paddies fertilized with human and animal waste, heat, humidity, snakes, leeches, ticks, mosquitoes with Malaria, and RATS!!
What does DEROS mean, and when did you serve in Vietnam?Not entirely sure but at the time I DEROS out Fraggings were unheard of.
Well 20% of the criminal population are sociopathic or psychopathic.They happened more in the 70s when everyone knew that the US was pulling out and no one wanted to be the last man KIA in Vietnam. It is also important to remember that Judges often gave young men convicted of drugs and various violent crimes a choice of jail or the Army. As a result the Army of 60-72 was composed of large numbers of criminals, drug addicts, and sociopaths.
Sounds like it truly stinks, plus the rats present a concern of rabies (100% fatal), and Malaria is also genuinely fucked up.
What does DEROS mean, and when did you serve in Vietnam?
Well 20% of the criminal population are sociopathic or psychopathic.
That few?
The breakdown in discipline seemed to be based on the unpopularity of the war and the idea of giving criminals an option of joining the military, correct?
So, bar-fights, animal encounters, and vehicle accidents were under "non combat" if they occurred outside of a battle and "combat" if they occurred in battle?
I meant if PEP wasn't provided right away. You'd have to have treatment within reach, and be able to get medevac to you within a few days.tyrodtom said:Zipper it seems you always feed a little false information into most of your reply/question returns. For one Rabies is not 100% fatal, if you wait for the onset of the symtoms of the disease, you chances aren't good at all, but if you get treated within a reasonable period of the infection your chance of recovery is very good.
Really? I only know of two cases, both of which were recent (Jeanna Giese who was given the Milwaukee protocol; and another person who, far as I know, was unnamed, and was given PEP after symptoms appeared, but survived because of this).I know a survivor.
Earth post November 17, 1983...Some of your questions, like that last one, has me wondering what planet you grew up on.
I thought I made clear it was a rabies case treated well before onset of symptoms, 1 or 2 days after he was bit.I meant if PEP wasn't provided right away. You'd have to have treatment within reach, and be able to get medevac to you within a few days.
Really? I only know of two cases, both of which were recent (Jeanna Giese who was given the Milwaukee protocol; and another person who, far as I know, was unnamed, and was given PEP after symptoms appeared, but survived because of this).
Earth post November 17, 1983...
Uh, I didn't notice that detail. Regardless, you should read about the Jeanna Giese case, it's pretty fascinating (fucked up, but fascinating).I thought I made clear it was a rabies case treated well before onset of symptoms, 1 or 2 days after he was bit.
Nobody's accusing you of deliberate deceit, Zipper. It's just that in your habit of paraphrasing other people's posts to enhance your understanding, you often choose words that change the meaning or implication of the original thought. I'm sure you don't mean it that way, but it comes off to some of the wordsmiths around here as "putting words in their mouths" that they didn't intend.BTW: I don't "feed in false information" -- I'm not trying to deceive anybody.
Though this might sound stupid, but do cooking temperatures kill the Rabies virus?RATS: rats were literally everywhere in Vietnam though surprisingly few around major cities and villages. My first trip through a Vietnamese open-air market gave me the answer. Rats were a major food item and hundreds of skinned, roasted, rat carcasses were sold. The meat was a bit "gamey" a lot like rabbit/squirrel (both of which are after all rodents).
I assume this was passed along to newer units coming in?Now as to the rats themselves we're NOT talking about those cute little white lab rats or even the city rats you may have encountered. These dark-brown monsters were the size of a large cat, easily 15 to 18lbs (7 to 8kg) with no fear of man. In the jungle we developed a way of wrapping yourself up in your poncho so no skin showed as you slept
And I guess the rabies cases were usually the serious cases that ended up resulting in a medevac?RABIES: Being involved more in the villages/training programs/clinics and occasional combat missions I really can't recall any rabies cases personally. However animal bites were either ignored or if serious sent to a field hospital for evaluation.
Bats are a common source of rabies in the US as well. I guess it spreads to the dogs from the rats, and the dogs and cats eat the rats (and in doing so prevent them from proceeding to bite and infect people).With all the bats, monkeys, and free-roaming village dogs in Vietnam rabies was a major problem.
Yikesover 25% of the dogs' rabies cases were diagnosed in puppies 8 to 16 weeks of age. These puppies posed a particularly insidious threat to humans because they were almost always asymptomatic when they died.
That's interesting. I do know that cats an somehow go asymptomatic for up to a year. That said, if they tested them, they basically decapitated them and examined the brain itself.Additionally, none of the cat, monkey, bat, or rodent samples submitted tested positive.
The rabies lyssavirus is a fragile virus in that drying out, sunlight, and heat can deactivate (NOT kill, virus particles are NOT alive to begin with) it. Freezing will not deactivate the virus.do cooking temperatures kill the Rabies virus?
Actually, the second attack was the result of bad weather, hypervigilance bordering on paranoia, and something that the task force commander, the ships captain, or both basically said they weren't sure even happened.The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was President Johnson's key to unlocking public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the key to the resolution was LBJ's brilliant manipulation of the press. It is, perhaps, the best example of how presidential news management can shape public policy. In early August 1964, North Vietnamese PT boats and a U.S. destroyer did battle in the Gulf of Tonkin. Other than those two facts virtually every other report was either misleading or even false. Contrary to the New York Times report that the U.S. destroyer "was on a routine patrol when an unprovoked attack took place" the destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence gathering operation near an area where the U.S. had twice attacked North Vietnam the day before. In fact, evidence suggests that the second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats never happened.
Actually, the second attack was the result of bad weather, hypervigilance bordering on paranoia, and something that the task force commander, the ships captain, or both basically said they weren't sure even happened.
This was known since at least 1988 (Going Downtown mentioned this).
Good to know!The rabies lyssavirus is a fragile virus in that drying out, sunlight, and heat can deactivate (NOT kill, virus particles are NOT alive to begin with) it. Freezing will not deactivate the virus.
Rabid animals dot not always appear to be rabid. The lyssavirus will begin to appear in the saliva of a affected animal in from three to six days before the animal shows physical signs of the disease. Next, the lyssavirus is concentrated in the brain, spinal cord, and saliva NOT in the blood, urine, or feces. In the latter stages viral particles can appear in muscle tissue but again the major concentrations are in the brain, spinal cord, and salivary glands.
Street vendors in Vietnam were not under any kind of government health/sanitary controls or regulations. So eating anything on the street was akin to Russian Roulette. Dead animal carcasses hung in the open air from vendors stalls waiting for a buyer. Other vendors kept their animals alive so that potential buyers could see that the animals were healthy. Once selected the vendors would kill the animal on the spot and skin/butcher it if asked. Again under zero sanitary controls.
Recently there were two cases of rabies in men from Hanoi, in Vietnam. One had no known history of an animal bite or other rabies exposure, while the other had been bitten a month before becoming sick by a non-rabid dog (the dog was still healthy when the man developed rabies – if the dog had been rabid at the time of the bite it would have died within two weeks). Both patients had butchered and eaten either a dog or cat, including the brain, within 3-8 weeks of becoming sick.
In both cases, the affected people were exposed to animals that were sick (cat) or may have been sick (dog hit by car). Only the people who butchered the animals got rabies, while no one else who ate the animals got sick. It is most likely that the two men were exposed to rabies virus during butchering, through contact of infected nervous tissue (e.g. brain) with any tiny bit of broken skin, or even possibly the eyes, nose or mouth, before the tissue was cooked. In Vietnam,butchering (not eating) dogs is a recognized risk factor for developing rabies. It is extremely unlikely that eating cooked meat from a rabid animal would result in transmission of rabies to a person.
- The first patient had butchered and eaten a dog that had been killed in a traffic accident. He took out the dog's teeth before butchering it, thinking that this would protect him if the dog had rabies (because rabies is so often associated with bites, he likely didn't realize the virus is actually in the saliva and brain tissue). The skull was opened to remove the brain. The man wore work gloves, and didn't report any injuries during butchering. All parts of the dog that were eaten were cooked first. No one else that ate any part of the dog got sick.
- The second patient had butchered and eaten a sick cat that had been acting abnormal for a few days. Again, all parts of the cat that were eaten were cooked first, and no one else that ate any part of the cat got sick. However, the man who developed rabies had prepared the cat's brain for cooking using his bare hands.