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It was due to time. It was going to be a period of 4-5 days to determine whether or not the bat was diseased. The County in which this happened had the bat sent to a laboratory in Atlanta. By the time they received it, the bat had been deceased for too long. Better safe than sorry, my friend had no problem complying with the recommendation for the vaccinations. She also had touched the dead bat... any contact with a carrier, dead or alive, can transmit rabies.
Bats are cute, little flying mice, although the fruit eating bats of the tropics are called flying foxes - they have a long fox-like face. When I worked for County Parks way back when, we had an ill bat in the cash drop drawer. I caught it, kept it in the dark until evening, then planned to release it away from the entry booth area, but alas, it died. It was a little Pipsitrelle (smallest of the North American bats) http://www.desertmuseum.org/kids/bat...ipistrelle.php. Since I worked at a park, and we had a museum, I decided to stuff the little guy - turned out it had a sinus infection.
When I was a university student I worked in the mammal collection (where I learned to stuff things), and the department head liked bats, so I got to help mist-net them on occasion, or just take care of and catalogue those in the collection. They are a fascinating class of mammals. And I have to admit, the Pipsitrelles are my favorites.