I hate to pile on, but the Dad in that story deserves it. What an idiot. It makes my blood boil. That child deserved so much more from his PARENT.
The rabies story is very strange. The shortest known incubation period for rabies is 9 days, but it’s usually longer. The closer the bite or exposure is to the brain or spinal cord, the shorter the incubation period. You’d think a scratch on the hand would have had a longer incubation period. It makes me wonder if this child was bitten while the bat was in the house. It’s possible (actually likely)not to feel or notice a bat bite, which is why anyone who sleeps in a house with a bat needs vaccination — unless the bat is available for testing.
@CIEE83 he didn’t start showing symptoms until 7 days after the bite/scratch. I can’t find anything that says how long he was in the hospital.
I’d have more sympathy for the father. Plenty of people don’t understand how rabies is transmitted or how serious it is. Years back, my in-laws invited us to stay with them at their place in upstate NY. They had been there all summer, doing some renovations, and didn’t see fit to mention that there were bats flying around the house at night. The first night there was uneventful… but on the second night, I overheard my SIL saying she had just seen a bird flying around. I couldn’t imagine what bird would be flying around in a house at night and guessed it was a bat. Sure enough, a few minutes later it flew into our room and goggled at us for a while, then flew out. There were 6 kids sleeping in the house that night (we decamped after the bat sighting) — all of them had to have shots, also my husband and I. My MIL and FIL thought this was hilarious— they refused to be vaccinated, mocked us for years afterward, and sent us every newspaper clipping about bats that they came across. Oh and btw when my BIL took his kids to the ER for rabies shots, the staff didn’t believe him that they needed them. The doc left to look it up, came back and gave them the shots.
@romanigypsyeyes - incubation period = time of exposure to onset of symptoms, not time to recovery/death.
My family rabies story. Brother who lives on a farm was walking down the road one afternoon with his 3 year old daughter when a raccoon rushes at them and latches on to my nieces leg. He picked up a board and killed the raccoon, puncturing his hand in the process due to a nail in the board. He called the county who came within 2 hours to pick up the animal and test it for rabies. It tested positive. Both had to go through a series of shots over the course of a week. this was 26 years ago. It was scary, this was upstate NY and there was a rabies outbreak. The state paid for the shots which were very expensive.
My uncle rescued a kitten in a rain storm from the road in front of their house. Turned out it had rabies, and they had to get the shots as of course they’d all been scratched.
I understand. Symptoms can appear in just a few days in a child though.
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=90&contentid=P02537
ETA: I lived with a bat in my room for several weeks when I was living in a rural village in Costa Rica. It just chilled on the ceiling and would occasionally come and go. (the walls of the hut didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling so there was not real division between inside and outside.) Never occurred to me to get rabies shots just from being in the vicinity of one. But yes, I would obviously go get one for me or my child if there was any chance of them breaking skin.
Bats have a relatively low level of rabies. However, we are talking about ALL bats. Bats that fall out of the sky are very likely diseased - that is the reason they fell out, duh. Humans that come into contact with a fallen bat must assume it is rabid and run to a hospital. The bat should be brought in for testing, too.
When I was a kid, Ms. Kitty (my calico buddy) caught a bat and brought it into the house. I knew that bats should not be handled and used sticks to pick it up and put it in a large glass jar. The bat used one of the sticks that I tossed into the jar to hang upside down, and I sat there and looked at it for several hours! It did not occur to me that Ms. Kitty could have been exposed to and contracted rabies (no rabies shots for pets back in the good old days in my tiny town). I am still alive, and Ms. Kitty had terrorized the neighborhood vermin for another decade after the bat incident. Guess that bat was not diseased, it was just not very lucky by choosing to fly past Ms. Kitty’s sharp clawed paws. 
Maybe it was lucky - I let it out when it began to look like it recovered from the encounter with Ms. Kitty.
The NBC story said the dad reported the child started to experience symptoms “a week or so later.” Knowing that this dad doesn’t seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer I wouldn’t be surprised if the exposure was a dozen or so days earlier.
In 1993, my H just narrowly snatched my then 3 year old son off the driveway as he was running, arms outstretched, screaming at the top of his lungs 'KITTY! KITTY! KITTY!" towards a tiny little kitten, as it lay writhing on the cement and foaming at the mouth. I threw a box over it and we called the NYC Health Department, which came and took it away. It was rabid, but thankfully, nobody in my family had touched it. There was a rabies outbreak in the city that year. In addition to my son, I had a D who was not quite 2. They did not go out of the house on their own two feet until the epidemic was over - my H and I carried them to and from the car or took them out in a stroller. It was very scary.
A friend of mine had a cat that was attacked by a coyote. The cat was actually in the coyote’s mouth when my friend ran outside and scared it away. She took the cat to the vet, and it was OK but the vet told her to get a series of rabies shots, just in case, because the cat had so much coyote saliva on it and she had patted the cat all over to check for injuries and to comfort it. They were both OK but - ouch!
@greenwitch “so much coyote saliva” is not a phrase I ever want to read during breakfast again. 
Stumbled on this thread…so here’s a question. Is vaccination a consideration during dorm assignments? Child was at summer program that had recently had tb outbreak…while there, received notification of mumps outbreak. This was not the first time after doing research. Where it gets complicated is when your child is either immune compromised or allergic and can’t get all necessary vaccines or boosters. Then what? If there are waivers in place for vaccinations, for either medical, religious or other reasons, how does that impact room assignments? I rely on others to be fully vaccinated for the safety of my child…it’s a different angle to think about.
If I recall correctly, the only vaccine I had to provide proof of to our daughters’ colleges was the meningitis vaccine.
@FLMomto3 It depends on the college. Many colleges say that students are “required” to have certain vaccines, but they don’t verify it. State universities usually abide by the state public school requirements. Private universities can add their own requirements on top of that. I never heard of room assignments being made on the basis of vaccination status, but I am sure you can ask. I would think that for your child the safest situation would be a suite with it’s own bathroom. That way, she is only exposed to the four or six people in the suite (and you can request that she be placed with fully vaccinated students). If she’s in a hall-bath situation, she will be exposed to everyone on the hall.
For SUNY schools, you must show that you had an MMR. You must submit a doctor’s statement. This requirement went into effect on August 1, 1990 (for history buffs, also the day “Desert Shield” began). You have to submit a meningitis form but I don’t think the shot is actually required (my kids have all had it).
That’s good. My D goes to University of Michigan. They ask for a medical form where you check off which vaccines you got, but they don’t ask for verification. Infuriating. And the president of the university is an MD, MPH.
No public Michigan unis have any requirements that you have to be vaccinated 
The entire state of Maine has vaccination requirements for college students, although there are health and religious exemptions. The proof has to be faxed by the physician’s office or in the form of a signed form from the physician. A general checkup recap/camp form or the student’s signature are not acceptable forms of proof.