An American man who wished to remain anonymous claims that as a result of getting the coronavirus his penis shrank by one and a half inches (some four centimetres), damaging what he descries as his "self-confidence in bed."
The man shared his story on the podcast "How to Do It", suggesting that, before he became ill with COVID, he was "above average".
"Now I've lost about an inch-and-a-half and become decidedly less than average. It's apparently due to vascular damage, and my doctors seem to think it's likely permanent," he complained. “It shouldn't really matter, but it has had a profound impact on my self-confidence in my abilities in bed.”
The man's fears are not an outlier, apparently, as urologists say that the "COVID d**k" phenomenon is real, as a penis can become smaller due to damage to blood vessels.
“It is true that having erectile dysfunction leads to shortening," Ashley Winter, a US urologist with California's Kaiser Permanente health care system, told the podcast. “You have this period of time where the penis is not stretching itself out, where it’s not [...] getting all this full blood into it, and that can lead to scarring of the penis and shortening of the penis."
According to a study of coronavirus symptoms and its lasting effects conducted by University College London, some five percent of males suffered a "decrease in size of testicles/penis", while around fifteen percent experienced a loss of erection. Some pharma experts, however, believe that the decrease in size can be treated with the same drugs used to treat unwanted limpness, including Viagra.