I had been putting quite a lot of thought into why I didn't feel disease outbreaks were fun, and the discussion over why non-stat effecting illnesses might still be unpopular, and something that occurred to me is the game may be suffering from importing cultural baggage by using real world diseases with real world symptoms (or things like them).
We are programmed at a biological level to feel aversion to disease and things we recognize as diseased, these are really difficult concepts to make feel cool because we know as human that a lot of types of sickness are not cool, and in fact this is such a strong impulse it results in social prejudice against people who are regarded as ill even if there is no communicable disease involved. It's nothing to do with fact and everything to do with appearances and aesthetics and cultural memetics.
I would use two examples from recent games that illustrate a rather elegant way to side step this and make what are essentially diseases into interest story elements that don't create player aversion. In both Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldurs Gate 3 two of the main characters, V and Gale, are dying of rapidly progressive fatal illnesses throughout the story but these are interesting and engaging parts of the story that don't create player aversion because they're not encoded in real world terms; V doesn't have syphilis and Gale doesn't have leprosy, which would both inherit all kinds of real world baggage, but instead they both have genre appropriate afflictions that are unique to their stories and that could only exist in their genres.
There is really no purely mechanical different between V's personality being progressively overwritten and dying of ebola, but one of them is cool and thematic and one is horrifying and pretty gross.
So put simply, while I still don't feel disease mechanics are really something the game needs at all, if it had to have them it would be much more interesting and thematic if these were fictional cyberpunk concepts with unique symptoms that don't crib from real world illnesses.
Some 'cyberpunk disease' concepts off the top of my head are below, though these concepts are not really meant to be the main thrust of the ideas so I don't think it's really necessary to pick through them for issues, I just don't want to write 'make more cyberpunk diseases' without giving examples of what I mean by that. Consider these suggestive concepts to get thr brainstorm going, not something to argue stat balancing about.
Nanoswarm Infections
Escaped self-replicating nanomachines designed to repair heavy armour in the field infect human subjects, converting damaged tissue to steel and ceramic composites over time. Eventually fatal. Airborne.
Cosmetic effects: Appearance progressively tinges to grey metallic, eventually fatal eruption of metal barbs throughout the body.
Optional mechanical effect: Every injury increases character weight with small increase in armour and small decrease in speed until treated.
Implementation notes: The early stages of this illness (several weeks or several months) only provide feedback to the player that they should incorporate it into their nakeds but don't include forced stock messaging. The end stages (final month) begin to forcefully include a description in progressively more nakeds until the character enters an unhealable bleeding state and dies.
Rampant Biomod Prions
Misfolded proteins unique to a biomodded structure escape and infect humans with Chimerism, causing their bodies to progressively alter to include features from the original host. Benign. Waterborne.
Cosmetic effects: Varied. Ex.: One eye a different colour, a streak of differently coloured hair, patches of differently coloured skin akin to birthmarks.
Optional mechanical effect: None.
Implementation notes: This illness provides feedback to the player that they should incorporate changes into their descriptions, up to the maximum progression of two nakeds per infection. No forced messaging.
SIC Bleed Syndrome
Electronic malware that degrades filtering in the SIC implant, confusing the brain with communication routing. Non-fatal. Cyberborne.
Cosmetic effects: None.
Mechanical effects: End stages causes CCOM and SAY/TO commands to randomly interchange effects, if this means there is no longer a valid target it fails as normal.
Implementation notes: Early stages (4-6 weeks) is suggestive only, providing feedback to players that they may often confuse what is spoken and what is sent through SIC, both coming and going, mimicking the actual player tendency to do this. Mechanical switching only kicks in if left untreated.
