Hydrophobia usually isn’t an actual fear of water, but a problem where the rabies virus causes the throat to spasm or lock when a victim tries to swallow fluids.
In the meantime, the virus puts the salivary glands on overdrive, causing the victim to drool virus-laden saliva, since he cannot swallow it. It really is a clever pair of mechanisms to make the virus more transmissible. If evil extraterrestrials were to design a virus to kill us off, I can’t imagine they wouldn’t consider something like this.
Bill Gates is taking notes.