Troy Lynn or others,
I'm interested in doing a little bit of rabies-in-ferrets research.  I
was wondering, if you have stuff on the computer, whether you might
send me some of it?  I'm tired of not having sources to back me up
when people start the litany about rabies, so I'm going to go down to
the library and dig up the facts for myself.  It would help if I can
start from somewhere.
 
All,
> Over the period reported in by the American Ferret Association Report
> (where the above data came from) which covers 1980 to 1992, we find the
> following total cases of rabies:
>
>     Dog      Cat    Livestock   Ferret
>    1996      2537     3935        12
>
> Since 1950 to present (1994), CDC reports a total of 16 confirmed cases
> of rabies in ferrets (private conversation with CDC). Using that same
> ratio of 5:1  (dogs:ferrets); the dog is shown to be over 33 times more
> likely to have contracted rabies.  The 5:1 ratio is very conservative
 
One thing that did come to mind about these statistics (keep in mind
that I am a ferret advocate, and also please correct me if I'm making
a dumb mistake): I think Dick Bossart makes a small mistake when he
uses the *current* ratio of dogs to ferrets (he says 5:1) to normalize
the rabies case data for *1980 to 1992*.  I think ferrets enjoyed an
enormous surge in popularity in the 1980's, so there would be many
more ferrets now than in the 1980's.  So when Dick computes (1996 dog
cases * 1 ferret/5 dogs) = 399 normalized dog rabies cases compared to
12 ferret rabies cases giving the statistic dogs are 33 times more
likely to contract rabies, he is overestimating the ratio a little bit
(it would really be lower than 33, but still higher than 1, I'd
imagine).
 
Todd
 
[Posted in FML issue 0819]