‘Super Gonorrhea’ Is Exploding Due To COVID-19, And People Online Are Just Tired Of 2020

This year has been a real one, and it ain’t over yet. As of this writing, there’s less than a week before 2020 gives way to a hopefully far, far superior 2021. But there’s still plenty of time for some more random, unpleasant surprises. Indeed, on Sunday people hanging out on Twitter saw some curious things trending. There was Hilaria Baldwin, who had been accused of pretending to be Spanish. And then there was something far, far worse: something called “Super Gonorrhea.” And it wasn’t some kind of joke: There’s a new, mutant strain of the venereal disease, and sure enough it was made possible by COVID-19.

As per The Sun, the World Health Organization reported that the overuse of antibiotics to treat the coronavirus — sometimes unnecessarily — has caused the sexually transmitted infection to find a new way to thrive. And thrive it has: Case numbers, which usually average 90 million globally per year, are up 17%. What’s more, “super gonorrhea” is well-named, with The Sun reporting that it “can lead to a five-fold increase of HIV transmission and eye infections that may lead to blindness.”

One reason the new strain is exploding is because most people aren’t going to the hospital unless they come down with COVID-19 symptoms. Instead they’re self-medicating, meaning, a WHO spokesperson told The Sun, that doctors aren’t catching this disease in time. And to make matters worse, “super gonorrhea” is extremely resistant to antibiotics.

So that’s fun! And when faced with cartoonishly, creatively bad news like this, people on Twitter responded with gallows humor. Because what else can one do? (Apart from try not to catch it.)

Then again, some people weren’t worried about catching a sexually transmitted infection in this socially distanced hellscape.

(Via The Sun)