Honest question, would this really need a control goup given that 100% people die of it? What would the control group prevent or provide?

I don't remember the beginning premise of Shaun of the Dead, but rabid positive thinkers reentering society sounds about right.

No it would not be necessary. A control group would give you confidence that it wasn’t some other aspect of the experiment that resulted in people surviving. But we have strong enough priors on rabies that we should feel confident the probability of accidentally curing rabies with a different aspect of the experiment is extremely small.

If that were the case we could do a later experiment to establish that factor. “We’re doing ‘something’ that makes people survive” is good enough for a first attempt.

No, and must likely the ethical committee review would reject the use of a placebo group in the study.

This seems like a trial that doesn't need a placebo group. We have a lot of data on people being infected with rabies and it's exceedingly rare for them to spontaneously recover. Basically, you could say the placebo trials have been carried out already.

I know you're joking but I still want to say you don't need a placebo group for a disease with 100% fatality rate.

I suspected the same, but I don’t know enough about controls for extremely small test groups.

It’s not extremely small. It’s extremely consistent that matters.

No IRB would sign on to allowing a placebo group for a disease that has basically* 100% mortality after symptoms show, and the research group that tried would almost certainly be charged criminally for some murder charge or another.

*There's maybe a dozen known recoveries from symptomatic rabies, ever. So, 100%.