I wrote the following to some people earlier this year asking about Pregnancy. I have updated the information in the Addendum that follows.
March 21, 2021
PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANY ANTI-VAXERS YOU KNOW
Do not confuse “asymptomatic” with “disease-free”. If you had a mild case of COVID-19, if you did not report it to your doc, if you didn’t notice that your energy levels were down or that you were overly tired, you may well have had the disease.
But this disease is not like you common cold. It is a disease that disrupts your ability to transport oxygen from your lungs to your body’s cells. If you had the disease, even if it was “mild”, you may have also had damage to those parts of your body that require oxygen, particularly your heart, your kidneys and your brain. And that damage may not become apparent for a number of years. My fear is that 10 years down the road we will see an increase in heart disease, earlier states of age-related dementia, kidney failure and emphysema that resulted from the damage incurred this past year.
And I fear we will also see, retrospectively in the next year, a statistically increased number of miscarriages due to oxygen deprivation during pregnancy, or worse, birth defects.
Finally, recovery from an infection may not provide you with immunity from reinfection with a variant or even the same virus. Only vaccination targeted at providing you with an immunity against infection will do that.
It is CRITICAL that you get vaccinated NOW. The potential dangers from vaccination pale in comparison to the potential damage from the disease.
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ADDENDUM:
It appears that some of the misinformation regarding the effects of vaccination on fertility comes from a false report on social media that there is a “spike” protein involved with the growth and attachment of a fetus to a placenta during pregnancy. This is a completely different protein (syncitin-1) than the Spike protein on the COVID-19 virus surface. Similar names, but completely different. Reactivity to one protein is totally irrelevant to the other, but the social media posts have proliferated this false equivalency.
Regarding male infertility: It has been shown that men who have recovered from COVID-19 infection may still have virus in their testicles. Remembering that this virus affects oxygen transport, those dividing cells can be negatively affected by the virus. Therefore, there may be a link to decreased fertility in men who have had the virus. The same is not true for those men who have been vaccinated. They do not have virus in their testicles and would be expected to be free of virus even after breakthrough infections and recovery.
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Human Reproduction
2021 Nov 3;
deab238. doi: 10.1093/humrep/deab238.
Effects of COVID-19 and m-RNA Vaccines on Human Fertilty
This is an in-depth discussion on the involvement of the male and female reproductive systems during SARS-CoV-2 infection or after vaccination. Our review indicates that both men and women, especially pregnant women, have no fertility problems or increased adverse pregnancy outcomes after vaccination, and, in particular, the benefits of maternal antibodies transferred through the placenta outweigh any known or potential risks.
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October 14, 2021
N Engl J Med 2021; 385:1533-1535
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2113891
Receipt of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccines and Risk of Spontaneous Abortion
Conclusion: There was no observed increase in spontaneous abortion among those vaccinated compared to historical rates.
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CDC communication updated Dec. 6, 2021
People who are pregnant or recently pregnant are more likely to get severely ill with COVID-19 compared with people who are not pregnant.
There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men.
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June 17, 2021
N Engl J Med 2021; 384:2273-2282
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2104983
Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons
Vaccinated and pregnant women were studied. Among 3958 participants enrolled 827 had a completed pregnancy, of which 115 (13.9%) were pregnancy losses and 712 (86.1%) were live births (mostly among participants vaccinated in the third trimester). Adverse neonatal outcomes included preterm birth (in 9.4%) and small size for gestational age (in 3.2%); no neonatal deaths were reported. Proportions of adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes in persons vaccinated against Covid-19 who had a completed pregnancy were similar to incidences reported in studies involving pregnant women that were conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Sept. 8, 2021
JAMA.
2021;326(16):1629-1631. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.15494
Spontaneous Abortion Following COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy
There is no increase in risk of Spontaneous Abortion after vaccination.
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CDC Communication Nov. 19, 2021
Among 1,249,634 delivery hospitalizations between 3/20 and 10/221, U.S. women with COVID-19 were at increased risk for stillbirth compared with women without COVID-19.
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CDC Report
November 26, 2021
70(47);1640-1645
Risk for Stillbirth Among Women With and Without COVID-19 at Delivery Hospitalization
Among deliveries with COVID-19, chronic hypertension, multiple-gestation pregnancy, adverse cardiac event/outcome, placental abruption, sepsis, shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome, mechanical ventilation, and ICU admission were associated with a higher prevalence of stillbirth.
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CDC Report
November 6, 2020
In an analysis of approximately 400,000 women aged 15–44 years with symptomatic COVID-19, intensive care unit admission, invasive ventilation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and death were more likely in pregnant women than in nonpregnant women.