Syphilis is a bacterial infection that grows, among other places, in your brain. Pneumonia viruses live inside your airways, and if anything happens in your br

Syphilis is a bacterial infection that grows, among other places, in your brain. Pneumonia viruses live inside your airways, and if anything happens in your brain it's because of the immune system doing something bad. They are very different things. In particular, >Finally, it is known that about 80% of the viruses observed in this study can invade the nervous system and trigger the immune system’s inflammatory response. So this fits in to the bigger picture that inflammation in your CNS from any source will do lasting damage.