Question about rabies PEP effectiveness

Factual Questions
1

Some backstory:

I remember as a kid my mother telling the awful story about a another kid (from some other part of the county) some (unknown) years earlier who had died as the result of rabies after being bitten on the face by a rabid dog.

I just happened to think about that today, and while looking for information on rabies cases in the US, I came upon this list of cases going back to 1950, on of which in 1953 is probably the case.

Now, there’s little in the way of details, other than this list, but the parts in it matched up with what my mother said, basically: a) it was a kid (age two), b)bitten on the face, c) by a rabid dog, d) in this state, (although it doesn’t give the county).

Now, there’s no information on the treatment or anything else, so it’s interesting to see that the time from the dog bite to death was only 21 days.

Considering that this was a two-year-old, and this was in the days when rabies PEP consisted of 21 stomach shots. . .

a) Might the child have died from the vaccination, or could the rabies have incubated in 21 days?
b) Has there ever been a case of failure of human PEP (before clinical symptoms arose)?

2

[QUOTE=Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

a) Might the child have died from the vaccination, or could the rabies have incubated in 21 days?

[QUOTE]

Maybe. According to this cite (not sure how reliable) it’s 7 days to 1 year in canines. I’m not sure if there would be a reason it couldn’t be 21 days in a human. On average it’s 30-50 days, so it’s certainly not too far off, especially in an infant. However, it’s also possible that the severity of the actual bite contributed to the death.

3

Generally speaking, the closer the site of the bite is to the brain, the quicker the victim will die.

4

According to the CDC’s website, “There have been no vaccine failures in the United States (i.e. someone developed rabies) when PEP was given promptly and appropriately after an exposure.”