Corona Fever

After a long day purchasing a car, I went to sleep feeling chills. I figured I got a little sick from biking all day to the Queens Subaru car dealership… Anyways, when I woke up, I was burning. I’ve never missed a day of school or work for sickness in my life, so the fever was quite unusual. I was freezing despite being bundled up in several layers of sweatshirts, yet I was incredibly hot and sweaty at the same time. Every time the fever subsided during the early afternoon, it returned with a vengeance by nightfall. I dreaded sleeping. For 9 straight nights I endured intense back aches, then headaches then drowsiness. Drinking ginger tea didn’t help. I eventually lost my appetite. I was a mess. I would just strum my guitar, stare blindly into space, and wait for the hallmark impending corona cough vultures that would take me down.

The cough never came. Instead, my testicles became engorged… like 2 large smooth skinned plums. I didn’t think anything of it till I went to my physician after a week of fever. my doctor did a double take after catching a glimpse of my balls during my exam. “what, you never saw an asian with big balls before?” I thought. She told me that given my profile, they didn’t recommend blood testing for corona… to come back if I had difficulty breathing. Thanks. I left the office thinking if I didn’t have corona, I certainly did now after visiting her contaminated office. Regarding my balls, I speculated I was just going through a period of exceptional virility since I hadn’t been in my home for a while and I had just reconciled with my wife.

A couple weeks later, now that my balls have now shrunken to normal human size, I would find out my mistaken virility was in fact a massive amount of corona hiding out not some manifestation of some ramped-up sperm production. Since I never got the trademark corona virus cough, I went online and googled “large testicles corona” on the internet. Lo and behold, my suspicions were confirmed by a New York Post article that said the virus lurks in the balls as a hideout place. “scientists found that females cleared the virus, on average, 2 days sooner than males. to understand why it might take longer for males to clear the virus, the scientists hypothesized SARS-CoV-2 needs a specific receptor to enter human tissue. This receptor, called angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), appears in several regions of the body, including the lungs and testes. The scientists examined various tissue sites and noted that the expression of ACE2 was particularly high in the testes. Conversely, they found very little ACE2 expression in ovarian tissue. High expression of ACE2 in testes raises the possibility that testicular viral reservoirs may play a role in viral persistence in males. In both men and women, these ACE2 proteins, or receptors, are plentiful in the lungs, the gastrointestinal tract and the heart. Not surprisingly, all of those tissues are vulnerable to attack from the virus that causes COVID-19. that the testes may harbor the SARS-CoV-2 virus in men, providing it sanctuary from the immune system. While women offer the coronavirus plenty of opportunities to enter their cells, men’s testes may give the virus an extra point of entry. And since the testicles are walled off from the immune system, they may be among the last hiding places from which the virus is driven out.”

In New York City, 68% of deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been in men, and 32% in women. Simple math shows each ball contributes your chances of male mortality by 18% ((68-32)/2). I calculate if all men had one ball, then we would have an equal chance of dying as females.

The New York Post (leader of non-tabloid news) article cited 2 Indian scientists that made the study. Shastri led a team based in New York while her mom, Dr. Jayanthi Shastri of Topiwala National Medical College (one of the leading medical institutions in the world), led a team in Mumbai. The researchers in India tested hospitalized patients and their infected family members every two days to gauge how speedily they cleared the corona virus once infected. Leave it to the Indians to focus on testicle sizes of corona patients while other countries are trying to procure ventilators for their emergency rooms. That Indian doctors are focused on nuts was not particularly shocking. I do remember a childhood Indian friend who would eventually become a doctor who was addicted to porn in high school.

Another stray internet search on my long lost childhood friend yielded the following review… which I could imagine. He was gifted in biology, but a little off base personally. “Dr. P's behavior was so extreme -- pompous, no regard for the emotional side of family members, and seemingly condescending -- that one of the other doctors pulled me aside to say "He's really an excellent doctor." I put my father's life at risk to wait until the next shift came on, just to avoid Dr. P's manner, which basically told me my father would die either quickly or slowly (punch line: he didn't, and lived quite a long time beyond that evening). I dealt with nearly 100 doctors during my father's treatment, and only one was similar to Dr. P. I believe he is an excellent clinician. But he needs to work a whole lot on his bedside manner.”

At the end of the day, I told my boys to be on the lookout for enlarged balls. My whole family is and has been asymptomatic despite me breathing all over them, but perhaps, if my sons go through a period of enlarged balls, it would confirm my internet corona self-diagnosis. My boys tell me I probably just had the flu, that I was stupid, and that without corona PCR or antibody testing… I was delusional. I tell them that kids have been by-and-large asymptomatic around the world.

I have been going out sans mask because I believe my 9 day fever and enlarged testicles was not a fluke. As the novel corona virus has run rampant, so too have unsupported claims about how to treat it. Trump has been touting malaria drugs, sunshine, and drinking disinfectants. Generally speaking, I figure once you have antibodies for a specific pathogen, it's harder to get sick with that same disease again because those antibodies are able to “recognize” the pathogen and deactivate it when it enters the body. This is why it's very unlikely for you to get chickenpox twice – your body recognizes it if you're exposed again and can usually fight it off.

My boys tell me if I did indeed contract corona, studies in China, Korea and Japan show people testing corona positive after recovering suggest I should quarantine myself. I tell them that given all the shoddy testing equipment sent all over the world by china (58,000 tests sent from China to Spain were rejected), it could be false positive testing data and just to do me a solid and check the size of their balls once in a while. Anyways, I’m ready to travel the world and take advantage of cheap airfares and hotel rates. but my boys think that is wishful thinking, that I just had a flu, and I will really get covid if I do that.