New Study Says Rightists Are Dying of Venereal Disease, Not COVID

[Bob Duncan]

Your Brain Is Slowly Eaten Alive

In later stages of the disease, syphilis has been known to attack all of
the vital organs, including the brain. Some victims have been left in a
vegetative state, while others - like crime lord Al Capone - suffered the
fate of completely losing their personalities and essentially becoming
Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

Capone contracted syphilis when he was 18, but ignored the disease,
allowing it to ravage his body and brain. By the time he was interned at
Alcatraz, he was barely the same person who had run one of the largest
crime syndicates of the 20th century. Prisoners and workers at the island
jail noted that Capone would spend most of his time cowering in his cell
and talking to himself like a baby.

After he was finally released from prison Capone spent the majority of his
final years in an estate near Miami casting a fishing pole into his
swimming pool, hoping to catch something. He eventually died from
complications related to a brain hemorrhage.
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images / flickr / No known copyright
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The Cartilage In Your Nose Disintigrates

...Maybe. Syphilis is the Bo Jackson of STDs, meaning that it can pretty
much do whatever it wants. One strange symptom of syphilis is the giant
hole that's left in your face where the disease has eaten away the flesh
and cartilage of the nose. It's now known as saddle-nose deformity, and it
mostly appears in victims of congenital syphilis (the syphilis you're born
with). In sixteenth-century Europe, the syphilitic nose became a mark of
shame, a visible sign of the moral and bodily corruption that stigmatized
its unfortunate victims.
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images / flickr / No known copyright
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Strange Lumps Appear On Your Body

One symptom that can occur years after the contraction of syphilis is a
series of painless lumps that appear across the body. Unfortunately, the
lumps don't stay painless for long - left untreated, they can quickly
become scabbed over and secrete a nasty pus that makes every day life an
excruciating hurdle. In 2015, a 38 year old man in China finally went to
his doctor years after catching the disease and became a marvel of modern
medicine when he was put into immediate treatment, curing the ulcers and
leaving gaping holes in his body.
Photo: DeveionPhotography / flickr / CC-BY 2.0
You Could Become Paralyzed

One of the scariest things to think about is the possibility of being
totally paralyzed and unable to communicate with our loved ones. Most
people who suffer from syphilis-related paralysis get that way because
they refused to seek treatment and found themselves locked into the later
stages of the disease.

The largest outbreak of syphilitic paralysis occurred in the Victorian era
when hundreds of people (mostly men in their 30s and 40s) received the
diagnosis of general paralysis of the insane. In the 19th century, no one
wanted to admit that syphilis was the cause of the paralysis, but in 1905
doctors finally came to the conclusion that what they were seeing was
untreated syphilis that had attacked the brain and rendered its victims
utterly helpless.
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images / flickr / No known copyright
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Your Body Becomes A Pus Factory

If you think the idea of oozing sores is gross, then you should probably
avoid having your body covered with lesions that do nothing but secrete
pus and make your life a living hell. The worst lesions appear during the
final tertiary stage of syphilis and you never know where they'll pop up.
Even if the initial canker sore that warned of the coming body apocalypse
was on your genitals, that doesn't mean that your tertiary sores will be
there. They could suddenly grow across your face, or - if you're lucky -
somewhere that can be covered by a thick coat.
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images / flickr / No known copyright
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Disappearing Lesions

The biggest indicator of second-stage syphilis is the collection of
massive lesions that form on your genitals, anal cavities, and anywhere
that you were putting the syphilis stick 20 to 90 days after contraction
of the disease. And while it seems like lesions are the worst thing that
can happen to your body, it's actually much worse when they go away. When
the lesions vanish, it is the beginning of the latent period of syphilis
that can take years to kill you, but don't let that be comforting. While
the disease isn't showing up outside of your body anymore, it's doing
irreparable damage to your internal organs.
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images / flickr / No known copyright
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You Get A Rash

When your body begins to deteriorate from syphilis, one of the most
obvious signs is the full-body rash that takes over your skin. The rash
initially appears as psoriasis, or a regular skin irritation, before
becoming full-blown violaceous circular papulosquamous lesions. Usually,
the rash covers the entire body in a symmetric pattern and is accompanied
by a low-grade fever, generalized adenopathy, headache, malaise, and a
mucocutaneous rash. So, if you suddenly develop a symmetrical rash across
your whole body, you should get to the doctor immediately before you pass
the tipping point from super sick to almost dead.
Photo: Dboybaker / flickr / CC-BY 2.0
The Eyes Tend To Go

Complications from a syphilis infection can affect virtually all ocular
structures. On the ocular surface, syphilis can cause conjunctivitis,
episcleritis, or scleritis - which are all ways of saying that you'll have
gross, red, puffy eyes. And that's just on the outside. It's possible to
contract uveitis, a version of conjunctivitis that occurs inside of your
eye and can cause severe vision loss. The long-term illnesses that tend to
accompany the tertiary side effects of syphilis are glaucoma, cataract,
epiretinal membrane, and macular edema. So, even if you end up living out
a longish life, you still run the risk of partial, if not complete, vision
loss.

[Bob Duncan]

[Bob Duncan]

[Bob Duncan]

[Bob Duncan]

[Bob Duncan]