Could this be the info that pushes dudes into wearing masks?

Erectile dysfunction. The dreaded ED. Having a body part that suddenly refuses to rise to the occasion. One of the long term side effects of a COVID-19 infection is apparently an unhappily flaccid penis.

This little news gem was kind of buried in a discussion of "long haulers," the people who recover from COVID-19 but do not emerge unscathed. Many people who are now recovering have found that it is taking them a long, long time to get back to some semblance of normal. Patients who never got sick enough to require hospitalization are nonetheless learning even a mild case of COVID-19 can knock you down for many months, possibly years. This is all still so new no one really knows yet just what all the long term effects might be. 

Reading that erectile dysfunction could be one of those effects didn't actually surprise me. I did do a quick literature search to confirm that the information that had been shared from a local television news broadcast was based on fact, i.e., actual research. It was, and is.  Researchers have described this as a "worrying" complication for older men, but I have a hunch younger dudes wouldn't be too thrilled with it either.

I've been seeing articles for quite awhile in which researchers posited that classifying COVID-19 as a respiratory illness similar to other causes of pneumonia is misguided. It's more accurately a cardio-vascular illness. The virus binds to the angiotensin converting enzymes (ACE) in the body; anyone who's ever been diagnosed with high blood pressure has probably been prescribed ACE inhibitors. ACE affect blood pressure regulation in the body and not in a good way, which is why ACE inhibitors exist.  (For that matter, hypertension is also the reason Viagra exists: It was developed as a treatment for high blood pressure.) 

But instead of going off on a long tangent about high blood pressure and ACE inhibitors, I'll just note that hypertension appears to be the most common comorbidity in patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Again, not much of a surprise when ACE have been identified as the virus's preferred landing spot. That, and neutrophils found primarily in nasal passages (Pull the damn mask up, moron. Every time you breathe in you're inviting viruses to colonize your body.) If you already have an over-abundance of ACE, it's the physiological equivalent of providing a nicely fertilized garden in which to sow the rutabaga seeds instead of tossing them into a gravel lot. 

Then, once it's landed and starts to replicate, COVID-19 does strange things to various organs and affects the circulatory system. Patients develop clots in capillaries; extremities (toes and fingers) end up dying from lack of blood. And maybe, just maybe, other dangling appendages. 

So do y'all think that if we started showing young dudes photos like this one and told them that if they get sick their dicks could end up looking like that, too, they'd be willing to wear face masks?