The Delta variant of the COVID-19 disease now accounts for around 83 percent of confirmed infection rates in the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned last Monday that the seven-day rolling average for new hospital admissions has steadily increased in the past month.
The reason this is happening is because there are people, mostly in the South and Mid-west, who still refuse to get vaccinated, posing a threat to even the fully vaccinated.
According to the CDC, every county in Florida and Arkansas is experiencing high community transmission levels.
Nearly one in five new cases in the country is being reported in Florida, and Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama aren’t far behind.
This has caused the CDC to reinstate indoor mask mandates it lifted for vaccinated individuals in April.
New York City and California are now mandating vaccines for health care workers and government employees. Those who refuse will be required to submit to weekly virus testing.
Clearly the the Biden administration’s appeals to our collective humanity over the past seven months have not worked as well as anticipated.
Despite the undeniable public health threat, some intransigent Americans aren’t going to be persuaded to consider how their selfish denial of science harms everyone.
Or are they?
A study last year suggested vaccine aversion may be linked to fear of emasculation.
But what is more emasculating than impotence?
Two recent scientific papers conclude a connection between COVID-19 and men‘s inability to maintain erections.
Authors of the Andrology journal study “Mask up to keep it up” report COVID-19 damages the cardiovascular system, which may result in erectile issues linked to blood vessel diseases.
The study also reports both erectile dysfunction and COVID-19 tend to be more severe and prevalent in men suffering from diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
Another study in the World Journal of Men’s Health reveals COVID can linger in penile tissue long after male COVID sufferers recover from its worst symptoms.
As Salon reported:
“Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine say that their study found men who previously did not suffer from erectile dysfunction but developed it severely after their COVID-19 infection.”
Ranjith Ramasamy, M.D., associate professor and director of the Miller School’s Reproductive Urology Program, and study author explained:
“This suggests that men who develop COVID-19 infection should be aware that erectile dysfunction could be an adverse effect of the virus, and they should go to a physician if they develop ED symptoms.”
This is just one of the side effects we are learning about “long-haulers,” victims of COVID in a separate category from the 80% who experience mild symptoms and those complaining of severe symptoms for three to six weeks.
So if there is a man in your life afraid a COVID vaccine might make him look like a “sissy,” ask him if he would rather be impotent.
That might do the trick.
Image credit: Diana Polekhina via Unsplash
