The patient had the organ transplanted at a hospital in Ohio in December and died in January, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Lynn Sutfin said.
A subsequent investigation that also involved the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ohio Department of Health determined the patient got rabies from the donated organ. Sutfin did not specify which organ was transplanted.
But also, tetanus is commonly misunderstood. Scapes and scratches are extremely unlikely to result in tetanus, regardless of what causes it. Rust isn’t any more likely to transmit tetanus.
Tetanus is an anaerobic microbe that can only really survive in deep cuts and punctures where air isn’t able to reach the wound. The spores are basically everywhere… But the spores only bloom and become dangerous when they come into contact with blood. Once they bloom, oxygen will kill them. So you don’t need to worry about it for surface-level scratches and scrapes, because the air will kill off any blooms. The only reason it is commonly associated with rust is because one of the more common puncture wounds is from stepping on rusty things.
Huh, interesting. Thanks for the info, I was under the misconception that it was directly tied to the rusty metal itself.
It’s an extremely common misconception, and why I bothered pointing it out at all. People will get a scratch from rust, and immediately panic about tetanus. In reality, tetanus is basically everywhere. Rust is simply a good carrier because it has lots of rough surface area and is good at poking people.