Coronavirus Might Sterilize You — So I’m Freezing My Sperm
I just jizzed in a little cup. Technically they call it “collecting a sample”, but you know the deal. I had some help from a cute assistant, but the rules said no lube and no saliva, so she just gave me a raw handjob. 8th grade style. I didn’t trust her aim though, so I dealt the finishing blow myself. 5 days of nofap had me feeling explosive, and I only had one…shot.
I feel better now that it’s over. By the time you’re reading this, I will have already dropped the sample off at Fedex and it’ll be well on its way to a liquid nitrogen chamber. For $15/month Legacy, a YC funded startup that helps men with fertility testing and sperm freezing, is going keep it safe for me until I have need of it. I hope I never do.
I’m freezing my sperm because I’m freaked the fuck out. An autistic lover of mine who wants to keep my genetic material in reserve for her own purposes read all the science and told me that COVID-19 can sterilize you. She doesn’t want my children now, she just maybe wants them later, so she told me all this in an effort to get me to 1) take COVID-19 even more seriously and 2) freeze my sperm. She’s succeeded on both counts.
Here’s the science. We know that COVID-19 is >85% similar to SARS [1]. We know that COVID-19 binds using the protein receptor ACE2 which appears on the surface of human cells [2, 3]. We know that SARS also primarily binds using the ACE2 receptor site [4, 5, 6]. This recent paper claims that the expression of ACE2 in the testes is among the highest in the body (second highest behind kidneys). Specifically, the paper explains that the testes cells with the highest ACE2 expression are the seminiferous ducts (which produce sperm) and Leydig cells (which produce testosterone). And looking back at historical data from COVID-19 patients, we know that 10% of infected patients had some sort of abnormal kidney function.
So what does this mean for our balls? It’s not clear. Maybe COVID-19 induced castration only takes place in men who fell seriously ill, or maybe it still affects asymptomatic carriers just the same. Maybe the virus never makes it to your testes at all, or maybe it hits your testes even harder than it hits your kidneys. There’s a lot we don’t know for sure yet because no one is going around giving everyone fertility tests.
There’s some more science that looks specifically at the affect of COVID-19 on the male gonad in survivors. While it claims that “there is no clinical evidence about whether SARS-CoV-2 infection can affect male gonadal function so far”, it also notes that the hormone concentrations in COVID-19 patients “are more likely to be caused by testes dysfunction, such as the possible damage of Leydig cells.” The study calls for a longer-term (3–6 month) followup for COVID-19 patients to do additional fertility testing.
I didn’t want to let the lack of conclusive evidence paralyze me, so I decided to do the rational thing and freeze my sperm. If you plan on having children after the quarantine lifts, you may want to consider it as well. In the version of the simulation where COVID-19 is actually eugenics on a global scale, the careless and the “just the flu bro” male contingent will be low-T and sterile (yay?) and those who played it safe will still be vigorous and pumping hot. And even if I do succumb to the virus and it breaks my balls, at least I’ll have some genetic material squirreled away for potential mates. Come and get it, ladies 😎💦💦💦.
