Most of us are sensitized to the danger of rabies, and know when we are exposed. On occasion, however, people do not know that wild animals can transmit the disease. On even rarer occasions, an animal bites someone and they don’t know it (I have heard that bats sometimes have very small bites that sometimes go unnoticed, especially if a sleeping person is bit).
In other countries, rabies kills thousands.
Deaths from rabies annually worldwide - 55,000. That’s a lot.