Trends in menstrual bleeding changes after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm7201

by bookofjoe • 4 years ago

150 213 4 years ago

SoftTalker• 4 years ago

"Vaccine trial protocols do not typically monitor for major adverse events for more than 7 days"

I am stunned by this. Seven days? Is there really no reason to think that a vaccine candidate might have adverse effects more than a week later?

codefreeordie2• 4 years ago

If you studied for more than seven days, you might find problems preventing your mass rollout, and then where would you be

pwned12• 4 years ago

You'd be billions of dollars poorer.

ellisv• 4 years ago

Given that the vaccine itself is out of your system within a few days, and if effective begin triggering an immune response, I don’t think there’s not much reason to monitor for safety beyond that point.

iratewizard4• 4 years ago

Thalidomide is out of your system by your first grandchild.

pwned12• 4 years ago

Is it though?

logic_beats_pro• 4 years ago

It is a permanent change to your immune system which lasts forever. There is no "undo" button to getting these vaccines.

Remember when it was claimed the spike protein is out of your body in 48 hours? This study found the spike protein persists in the body for at least 16 days and the antigen can be found for at least 60 days.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00076-9

Thats longer than if you actually contract COVID.

So now knowing this, would you monitor for safety longer?

lelandfe4• 4 years ago

Important to note that longer-term studies happened before full FDA approval:

More than half of the clinical trial participants were followed for safety outcomes for at least four months after the second dose. Overall, approximately 12,000 recipients have been followed for at least 6 months.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

But also "Phase 4" clinical trials are where the study of long-term effects occur. Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J are all doing those today. Here's a Jan 2022 paper that has some information on current-ish specifics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8665991/

in_cahoots• 4 years ago

As someone who was trying to conceive while the vaccine rolled out, this isn’t surprising. People were regularly reporting basal temperature spikes, delayed ovulation, and delayed periods. This is a community that is extremely data-oriented, since with the right measurements you’re able to predict your fertile (or non-fertile) window.

I was disappointed to see how little research there was into menstruation at the time. We were told that the vaccine was perfectly safe, and even questioning the vaccine made you ‘anti-vax.’ Now over a full year later the scientific community is confirming what random message boards have been saying all along. It may be safe, but nobody really cared to look at the impact on menstruation or pregnancy beyond confirming that the rate of miscarriage is unchanged.

skuhn2• 4 years ago

This study began in April 2021 and the paper was published in July 2022.

Presuming that the amount of time spent was necessary to thoroughly gather, review and document the findings, what would you have wanted done differently?

gjsman-10003• 4 years ago

Perhaps we wouldn't have had the news, pretending that there was no effect, and if there was, correlation is not causation, and then saying as little as 5 months ago that there may be an effect but that any effects on menstruation only lasted one day at the most [1]. Just be honest - dishonesty like this breeds anti-vaxxers.

[1] https://youtu.be/TWk2Z6mzZUU?t=60 (Good Morning America and ABC News talking about menstruation side effects 5 months ago and basically saying the opposite of this study)

PKop8• 4 years ago

Not taken the vax if your health and age profile didn't merit it, given the unknown unknowns and lack of long term testing, which many people highlighted endlessly for the past year or so.

Public concessions exactly to your point that long term testing takes time, and assertions to the contrary that tere are no risks of x, y, z were blatant sophistry intended to silence legitimate criticism. These vaccines were mandated at threat of loss of careers for crying out loud...people are still getting fired for not taking them long after covid is any sort threat whatsoever or where there can be plausible deniability about claims the vaccines actually prevent contracting covid etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29003019

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004097

(lot of "trust the experts", "you sound like one of the ignorant rubes" type of replies at those links, devoid of any sort of critical thinking, blindly trusting authorities without any acknowledgement to potential downsides outweighing limited upside of vax for many cohorts)

oldgradstudent2• 4 years ago

These side effects are not rare at all. These side effects should have been caught in the original vaccine trials.

The fact that it comes out now tells you something went very wrong in the trials. In a functioning science, a careful postmortem of the vaccine trials would be in order.

Trumpi• 4 years ago

what would you have wanted done differently?

When these problems were first reported, resolve to stick with the principle of informed consent rather than impose mandates.

slg2• 4 years ago

This lack of foresight is not something specific to this vaccine. It is the male bias ingrained in most western medicine. Due to fear of how experimental medicines will impact fertility and pregnancy, males are usually overrepresented in clinical trials which makes female specific side effects much harder to detect.

jelliclesfarm• 4 years ago

I agree. This is something that needs discussion.

brightball• 4 years ago

I'd accept the male bias approach for almost anything except the Covid vax.

There was a huge segment of society angrily screaming at everyone that everything was perfectly safe, if you didn't take it you were anti-vax and wanted to kill grandma. It was absolutely insanity on every social media channel. I'm sure some nuanced bits were lost in the noise, but it was virtually impossible to openly discuss even hesitation to vaccinate, much less complications.

We've heard from 2 local people in our small community who had family members die within 24 hours of vaccination. They were afraid to talk about it because of the blow back that came from anyone mentioning complications. A scary side of a lot of people came out and it's permanently affected my perception of a great many.

Maybe there was a male bias in the clinical trials, but I have a hard time believing any information about complications would have been released or accepted at that time.

planarhobbit2• 4 years ago

In my social circle it was women that were the most vocal on both sides of the issue. The men were mostly quiet and going along with whatever the wife or whoever wanted.

greenthrow3• 4 years ago

Quick Googling shows that the cold and flu can impact ovulation. So it is not a surprise that Covid or its vaccines can as well, since it often presents as more severe.

It was still the correct choice of action for you to get the vaccine and potentially delay conception. It is safer for you and the baby if you are vaccinated.

This study is just providing confirmation to something that all medical professionals likely assumed is true, based on the common knowledge that the flu and cold and other illnesses can also affect fertility.

peyton2• 4 years ago

correct choice of action

Correct? To… delay conception? According to… you?

I am not comfortable leaving decisions like that to others.

peteradio2• 4 years ago

It is safer for you and the baby if you are vaccinated.

Do you actually know this to be true?

airza• 4 years ago

The problem is that most vaccines affect menstruation; for obvious reasons the uterus is a hotbed of immune activity in the human body.

bamboozled• 4 years ago

I think the warning on the packet should've said that?

abathur3• 4 years ago

I think (at least) three big problems intersect here:

1. the sci/med establishment seems to have some ongoing ~bias issues that I don't fully understand when it comes to listening to and taking lay people seriously (especially women)

2. it's hard to do complex synthesis of relative risks and rewards across different studies measuring different things for different reasons

3. we've had a lot of uninformed and malicious actors splashing about in the information ecosystem

It's a two-way street. Researchers and public health officials both need to take women seriously and they need to have faith that they can research or discuss details like this frankly through their normal semi-public publication channels without people who don't grok or don't care about the nuance of their research using it as an info-cudgel to induce FUD that ruins lives.

To toss in the requisite anecdata, my sister got pregnant this past fall. She was due for a booster but FUD about it hurting the baby swayed her mind. She got omicron in late December, post-covid complications nearly took her and the baby in late February, and she had to live in the hospital until she delivered in June.

gjsman-10003• 4 years ago

To toss in the requisite anecdata, my sister got pregnant this past fall. She was due for a booster but FUD about it hurting the baby swayed her mind. She got omicron in late December, post-covid complications nearly took her and the baby in late February, and she had to live in the hospital until she delivered in June.

The tricky thing with this though is that, what if there is an unknown side effect due to lack of research that could have hurt the baby (how many years of research have boosters had?), and she didn't experience that side effect but unwittingly chose a different evil?

mmmmmbop• 4 years ago

This is just an anecdotal experience, but I was living amongst an international coworking community of a few dozen people in South Africa when omicron first broke out, and the vaccination status of people did not seem to have any observable effect on the prevalence or severity of the contracted disease.

That is to say that your sister may have experienced the same effects even if she had taken the booster.

origin_path6• 4 years ago

I have a lot of unvaccinated friends, some of whom have now had COVID. Their experience is not any different to those who were vaccinated. Bear in mind, Omicron emerged in 25% vaccinated South Africa and the reports from there were that it was so mild people didn't even realize they had COVID.

The problem with your view about "uninformed and malicious actors" is that this is how public health describes anyone who points out their mistakes. It's a cliché they use to shut down debate and opposition. I've read a lot of material about vaccines now from non-public health sources and never seen any that could be described as malicious or uninformed. Indeed, they are usually way more informed than those who simply "follow the science". And the idea they're malicious is pure Hollywood fiction. None of them ever are. They just want to know what's true about the disease and vaccines. You could though, argue that about the public health officials who constantly lie to the public about scientific topics in order to generate compliance.

c7DJTLrn• 4 years ago

Many people had concerns about the vaccine rollout. Not because we were worried about some 5G nanoparticle Bill Gates conspiracy nonsense but because of the potential unknown side effects. Doing a trial on a few hundred thousand and then rolling out to billions is like testing your changes locally and then pushing them straight to production.

"But human bodies are not anything like software dev" I hear you say. You're right. Biology is way more complicated and we know less about the mechanics of our own bodies than the computers we designed.

If we go forward assuming everything we do is infallible and silencing anybody with concerns, someday we will have a real disaster.

planarhobbit2• 4 years ago

Biology is way more complicated and we know less about the mechanics of our own bodies than the computers we designed.

We don’t know much about that either, to be fair.

throwaway0a5e2• 4 years ago

If we go forward assuming everything we do is infallible and silencing anybody with concerns, someday we will have a real disaster.

And if we go down this road hopefully it's sooner rather than later. The people responsible should have to live (or not) through the suck rather than having some yet unknown future generation be saddled with cleaning up the mess.

lelandfe4• 4 years ago

because of the potential unknown side effects

Without trying to inflame the rhetoric in this discussion (I feel like HN is one of the few places that this is possible) – will this be your stance on new vaccines and medicines going forward?

"Potential unknown side effects" is a critique that can be levied against almost any medical approval process, but the FDA has had an excellent track record with vaccine safety over the last ~70 years.

altarius• 4 years ago

On the other hand, I'm surprised how few people are worried at all about taking the COVID-19 antivirals.

kaba06• 4 years ago

What if you know that prod has a huge vulnerability actively being exploited. Will you wait for the QA to finish manual testing of the UI, or push the solution ASAP after the CICD pipeline turns green?

Still not a good analogy, but perhaps closer to the case.

mint2• 4 years ago

The vaccines were heavily politicized and the politicizing of them was not coming from a place of legitimate concerns, clearly shown by the same groups embracing snake oil cures with the only info backing them making the vaccine studies look like the most thorough studies ever done in the history of humanity. There were No worries about side effects for the sketchy snake oil.

dennis_jeeves1• 4 years ago

someday we will have a real disaster.

Real disasters always happen, but it happens to 'other' individuals, so no one is bothered.

bsaul• 4 years ago

The problem now is that so many people, in so many fields, relayed that "everything's safe, if you disagree or dare casting doubts you're an a ti-science sociopath", that it's going to be super super hard for them to admit they were wrong.

peyton2• 4 years ago

I think a similar thing happened with the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine. It remains unvacated.

throwaway4063826• 4 years ago

From a throwaway because of the potential backlash...This paper is pure bull. They did a survey of 30k people and asked them about their experience and then said that the vaccine didn't cause anything and that we should trust our institutions. They didn't even have a control (unvaccinated) group! Just 30k vaccinated folks who responded to a survey about whether they perceived more/less bleeding, and such.

I'm actually working (as a computational mathematician) with an OBGYN and a few other doctors on a paper on this topic right now. We're using real data and a control and doing real Bayesian stats and all of that. But the tragic thing is, we don't need to get fancy. There's so much signal that the vaccine is bad for women's reproductive health that it really is obvious. I hope we can find an uncaptured journal to get it published in.

This paper is pure propaganda that's toeing the line about vaccine safety. It's idea laundering so they can later point to an article in "Science" showing that it's safe.

I'm so sad that Science (the journal) as fallen so far and is so captured.

jbd28• 4 years ago

Pretty strong words and claims while providing no data to refute the paper

fferen• 4 years ago

Note that this is Science Advances, a much less prestigious journal than Science proper.

belter• 4 years ago

"Ten thousand report menstrual issues after having corona vaccine" (October 2021)

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/10/ten-thousand-report-me...

[Dutch Reference]: https://www.lareb.nl/news/veel-meldingen-menstruatiestoornis...

manwe1506• 4 years ago

How bad is it for health? This paper also notes that the virus itself is of great concern foremost, so any conclusion must be in comparison to the alternative (aka the control group): “Studies and anecdotal reports are already demonstrating that menstrual function may be disrupted long term [by the virus], particularly in those with long COVID (32–35)”

It seems so many commenters here miss that sentence, and live in a mental world where viruses are mostly benign but healthcare is mostly deadly.

Therefore, a statistical control group for such a trial as you describe doing is not an unvaccinated cohort for the same time period, but rather for infinite time. Thus your results will require substantial adjustment for the eventual rates of encountering COVID (and the estimated rates of equivalent adverse effects), since your trial will presumably be of finite duration.

bandyaboot2• 4 years ago

No actual professional would do something like what you’re doing here. Very hard to believe this is anything but pure bullshit.

Edit: it’s pretty sad that there are people who have such an ingrained agenda that they have convinced themselves that, yes, this IS how a professional involved in a scientific public health study behaves.

tiahura2• 4 years ago

How do you explain the fact that the US birth rate dipped (barely) pre-vaccine and has crept back up post-vaccine?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/natality-dashboard.htm#

koolba• 4 years ago

How would you have a control for a study like this when vaccinations were all but mandatory for large swathe of the population? You’re going to give a placebo vaccine and placebo vaccine card?

poorbutdebtfree• 4 years ago

There were several posters on HN pointing out menstrual cycles anecdotes last year and they were largely down voted and possibly shadowbanned. You don't even need censors anymore when the majority decides what is acceptable thought.

OrangeMonkey8• 4 years ago

I work in healthcare and life sciences research and I have to censor myself because my account will be banned if I don't. I literally do this for a living, but if I say something a moderator or admin doesnt like or that they feel 'awkward' about I would be gone.

Long in the future, when people can admit they are wrong, we will look back on this period with disgust. But, for now, carry on everyone - just a few more people banned and finally we can stop the spread.

magicalhippo2• 4 years ago

Yeah my SO had a very regular cycle before getting the vaccine (Pfizer). After the first shot it got totally out of whack. The doctors say they don't know why that is yet immediately follow up by saying "but the vaccine is completely safe".

I'm no anti-vaxxer, but that trips my BS alert bigtime. All I hear is "duck and cover".

mrguyorama3• 4 years ago

Consider things that can also de-regulate a woman's cycle:

Stress, eating different food, eating foods at different times, gaining a couple pounds, losing a couple pounds, getting sick, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much, etc etc etc.

The menstrual cycle is often a very sensitive system, and one I would argue most people are very unfamiliar with.

gu4ka474• 4 years ago

I’ve been too afraid to post this but you’ve inspired me.

I (a male) have always been super horny ever since I hit puberty. I woke up nearly every morning with an erection as long as I can remember. I’ve never had problems with erections with my wife.

I got the first Pfizer vaccine last year when it became available. The next time I was intimate with my wife, I lost my erection during sex - the first time it has ever happened in my life. “Normal” side effect they said.

Things got a little better so I was encouraged. I got the second vaccine as scheduled. The next two times we had sex I completely lost my erection during sex.

I’ve been searching to see if other men have had the same problem but either I am the only one, or everyone just sweeps it under the rug.

It’s been almost a year and I rarely have random erections. I thankfully don’t lose erections during sex, but I am no longer horny. I used to be the one to initiate sex through our marriage but now my wife usually does. My sex life has taken a huge hit since getting the vaccines. Of course I can’t blame the vaccines, but you will not be able to convince me that this is a coincidence.

The reason I am writing this is in case there are other men like me who think they are the only ones, because anyone who even thinks the vaccine could cause problems gets labeled an anti-vaxxer nut job. I was pro vaccine (I got my series right away) and still think the vaccine is important, but I think it’s a shame that no one is “allowed” to talk about side effects.

This is my anecdotal story.

octonion• 4 years ago

This is a consequence of the immune response. It's common to every vaccine (or viral infection).

autoexec• 4 years ago

but nobody really cared to look at the impact on menstruation or pregnancy beyond confirming that the rate of miscarriage is unchanged.

It's hard to blame them for not spending a ton of time before approving the vaccine considering safe changes to menstruation when they were working to do something about the dead bodies which were piling up so quickly they had to be stacked into semi trailers and dumped into mass graves. People were dying in vast numbers and we needed something safe and effective at preventing those deaths and the vaccines were exactly that. Safe and effective.

Obviously, they were very much concerned with pregnancy and miscarriage. A vaccine that makes people infertile or causes them to miscarry would never have been approved, but it's pretty reasonable that every possible impact wouldn't be noticed and deeply studied before getting it out to people.

Especially those side effects that only impact women since women (especially pregnant women) tend to be underrepresented since they're much more hesitant to enter drug trials in the first place leading to limited data. You can't blame the women for that. If it's unknown if a drug has a negative impact on fertility signing up to try it out on your body or your baby is taking a huge risk. The FDA's policy used to be to exclude women from the earliest trials to protect them for this reason, but that too caused problems to be missed. Adding women in early means it's more likely that a problem that affects only a small percentage of women will be caught, but there are no certainties.

For what it's worth, the menstruation issue wasn't ignored by science either. Covid infection also causes changes to menstruation and there was some evidence and concerns that infections may impact fertility in some cases. All of this has been looked into as reports came in. That's the process working. Vaccines are shown to be likely safe so they go out to the public, then doctors and patients continue to report issues that arise to gather data on side effects.

Some early papers about the impact of the vaccines on women (and pregnancies) include:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S102845592...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7522626/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.11.21264863v...

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2211

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6....

https://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Fulltext/9900/Severe_A...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.17.21257337v...

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-798175/v1

usrn• 4 years ago

"Trust the science" when there isn't any public study or experiment really means "trust the conjecture" but that's not so great for PR.

pygy_• 4 years ago

Animals studies (made IIRC by Pfizer or BioNTech, and using GFAP mRNA, not the spike protein) had shown that while most lipid nanoparticles stay at the injection sites, (quoting from memory) ~10-20% end up in the blood stream, then enter myocardial, hepatic, adrenal and gonadic tissues. In other words, organs that consume a large amount of cholesterol.

My informed guess would be that the nanoparticles combine with HDL/LDL in the blood stream, and end up in the cells that consume these, but this is speculation.

This would end up disrupting the ovarian endocrine cells (cholesterol is the chemical precursor of sex hormones), which can regenerate once the RNA and its product has been eliminated. The future egg cells should not be affected (and AFAIK the ovarian reserve is not damaged by the COVID vaccines), and neither is sperm production.

mcronce3• 4 years ago

long after covid is any sort threat whatsoever

People dying and people with - and still getting- long COVID would probably disagree with that statement.

PKop8• 4 years ago

Here again a blatant lack of clarity around the issue. Who are dying and at what rate? What are their comorbidities? What is the vax status of those that are dying, presumably many have taken the vaccine anyways yes?

But you do you, is the point. I'm perfectly fine with my choice of not taking it: I'm not overweight, I lift weights and exercise regularly, have low bodyfat percent, I get plenty of sunlight for Vitamin D and immune support. I do not need the vaccine.

This mentality of extreme safetyism applied indiscriminately even now is insane. Are you going to take covid boosters for the rest of your life? The disease is going to be continually weakened and become just another coronavirus. The rest of us will move on with our lives. Quite simply, I'm not worried about Covid at all. Can you say the same about the long term prospects of endless boosters on your body? I sure couldn't.

Tell me now how 100% confident you are there are no side effects because the propaganda experts and drug companies told you so, so we can come back to it in 6 months when more side effects start being discovered and posted here on HN...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29003555

mlyle3• 4 years ago

Who are dying and at what rate?

Mostly the very old, at this point; though I'm in my 40s where the rate starts to tick up. But beyond that, there's the risk of long term morbidity. My niece was early 20's, active, in good health, with no comorbidities and is now pseudo-disabled. The vaccine only removes about 30% of the risk of this type of outcome, but still that alone is worth it.

What is the vax status of those that are dying, presumably many have taken the vaccine anyways yes?

Looks like people who have taken the vaccine have about 6-10% of the risk of death of those who haven't, controlling for comorbidities.

Are you going to take covid boosters for the rest of your life?

A lot of us might-- though I've got a fair bit of hope that we come up with something better in the next couple of years. I will do my best to avoid infection in the meantime.

The disease is going to be continually weakened and become just another coronavirus.

Viral selection is complicated. Yes, in the very long term, many viruses end up becoming less virulent, but others go in the other direction.

Can you say the same about the long term prospects of endless boosters on your body? I sure couldn't.

I'm pretty dang confident that I can bound the risk from the vaccine to be much lower than the risk from COVID infection.

jmcgough• 4 years ago

But you do you, is the point

I've never understood this type of selfishness. If you get sick you will, on average, infect another 2-3 people. It's not just about you.

StillBored3• 4 years ago

While I sorta tend to agree with you, this is a _RESULT_ of people refusing to take the vaccines (or do full lockdowns/wear masks/etc). Like the original SARs strains it should have been possible to eradicate through strong public health measures, one of which was vaccination.

So, we can shrug this one off, because in the end it _only_ kills a percent or so of people, overwhelmingly already infirm or elderly.

We may not be so lucky the next time, and this attitude _will_ get us in trouble when that happens.

JohnTHaller3• 4 years ago

My under 40 triathlete friend with no comorbidities who wound up in the ICU for a month and needed two surgeries to drain his lungs would beg to differ. Or my buddy down the block under 40 with no cormorbities who is now on beta blockers for long term Covid. As would folks like my Dad who the vaccine and first booster didn't work on due to his suppressed immune system from receiving my kidney.

ccn0p2• 4 years ago

Yes and this insanity is literally keeping large numbers of people from engaging in parts of society. Some conferences, meetups, and events still require attendees to be fully vaccinated with no testing option. I was unable to attend an event just last week for this reason. It's stunning.

woodruffw3• 4 years ago

This kind of skepticism goes both ways: you could get COVID next week and discover that you have a latent comorbidity that otherwise would never have affected you.

From a public health perspective, universal (or near-universal) vaccination is an unequivocal good. Given the sum of what we know about both COVID and any side effects of vaccination, this remains the case.

somewhereoutth4• 4 years ago

With Covid everything is fine until it isn't.

Furthermore, it is pretty obvious that a non-replicating fragment of a pathogen given even every 6 months is going to cause less damage than the real thing (also available every 6 months the way things are going). Luckily we've done extensive trials to back that up.

dang3• 4 years ago

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

busymom07• 4 years ago

1. Covid vax does not prevent long covid:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/25/long-covid-...

2. Healthy young people under 50 or even 60 were not dying or getting hospitalized. Whatever risk they want to take, they should be able to take it without mandates. Since the vax does not prevent infection or transmission, one is only taking individual risk and not affecting others.

jamroom• 4 years ago

Specific to the US which states had vaccine mandates?

inferiorhuman3• 4 years ago

Healthy young people under 50 or even 60 were not dying or getting hospitalized.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...

By 35 and again by 50 your risk of death's increased. By 60 you're already seeing a disproportionately large amount of deaths.

fernandotakai• 4 years ago

i took all three shots and got covid about two weeks ago. it was HARSH. no sense of smell, no sense of taste, 3 days with high-ish fever (39C), the body ache was crazy bad and worse of all: brain fog. i managed to avoid going to the hospital, but barely.

and that's with 3 shots. i'm almost sure i would be in an ICU if i didn't get any shots.

blumomo• 4 years ago

and that's with 3 shots. i'm almost sure i would be in an ICU if i didn't get any shots.

How could we prove this hypothesis?

PKop8• 4 years ago

What would the shots making you sicker look like?

In any case, I never had any shots, got Covid last December, was sick for 3 days with a bad sore throat and recovered just fine shortly after.

Many people are rightly not so obsessed with irrational safetyism and have no problems avoiding the vaccine and getting on with life.

henry_bone• 4 years ago

I am 49yo, male. I'm healthy, but mildly overweight. I was very fit prior to the lockdowns (Melbourne, Vic, Australia), but I lacked the disciplinary wherewithall to maintain that fitness over the past couple of years.

I have chosen not to receive any Covid19 vaccinations and so I am "unvaccinated". I thought it was never going to happen, but eventually I contracted covid19, over Easter period this year. I too experienced myalgia, a mild fever. I also had a sore throat for about 2 days. I didn't completely lose my sense of smell, but coffee (for example) didn't taste great. Same with wine. That anosmia, such as it was, persisted for a week or two.

But that's it really. It was all over in about 2.5 days. I would not describe what I experienced as "harsh". I've had Influenza, and that was harsh. Sat me on my arse for a solid week. But not this. By day 4, I was doing household chores and more or less back to normal (mild anosmia not withstanding).

So, YMMV. :-)

dang3• 4 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131661.

enqk• 4 years ago

When people first talked about it, I was hearing scientists saying that both other viruses and vaccines often change periods, and thus it wasn’t surprising/alarming

sschueller• 4 years ago

Since the intent of the vaccination is to trigger an immune response very similar to the virus I think we should assume that all side effects the virus can cause could also be seen in vaccine trials.

The only symptom that I have yet to hear from the vaccination is loss of smell/taste.

dragonwriter• 4 years ago

Since the intent of the vaccination is to trigger an immune response very similar to the virus I think we should assume that all side effects the virus can cause could also be seen in vaccine trials.

If you define “side effects the virus can cause” (a term that usually is meaningless, “side effects” are unintended effects of a therapy, and thus deoebd on both the therapy and what it is intentionally used for) to mean “effects associated with the immune response to the virus” this is true by definition, but if you mean “symptoms of infection” it seems improbable.

The only symptom that I have yet to hear from the vaccination is loss of smell/taste.

A lot of what you hear is reports of events after vaccination that have very little effective filtering for whether they are caused by the vaccination or some other cause (including COVID infection.)

alliao• 4 years ago

this is a good start

jl6• 4 years ago

What else should I know about this research?
The nature of this survey means that we cannot compare the incidence of different experiences here with the general population (meaning, 40% of this sample having an experience does not mean that is the rate of that experience out in the world). The associations described here are not causal but provide evidence to better study these trends further. We emphasize that menstrual bleeding changes of this nature are generally not indicative of changes to fertility.

ec109685• 4 years ago

It’s so disturbing there are summaries like this that disregard the fact that this is self reported and there is a huge disclaimer that it is overly counting the incidents:

“Nearly half of the participants of a recent study who were menstruating regularly at the time of the survey reported heavier bleeding during their periods after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/well/live/covid-vaccines-...

Of course people when you ask them to reflect on something when there are news reports floating around about the issue are going to over report.

ETH_start2• 4 years ago

Is the reference to "people" instead of "women", in "currently and formerly menstruating people", a new trend in academia?

magneticnorth• 4 years ago

In this study in particular, the fact that there was breakthrough menstrual bleeding for trans men and others who have been hormonally preventing their periods for years was one of the particularly interesting findings, imo.

christkv4• 4 years ago

It's the anglo-sphere they've lost the plot. It's hard to take a study that splits data into white and the rest seriously as a scientific study. I was unaware that africans, South Americans and Asians were significantly different to "white" people to make a difference needed to be pointed out.

What exactly are they suggesting. That the vaccine was engineered to have a more negative effect on non-white women?

nerdponx2• 4 years ago

Medical outcomes are substantially and consistently different for different racial groups in the USA. It's in part a proxy for economic status. It makes sense to control for it.

throwaway4063826• 4 years ago

The lead author is in women's studies, not real science.

I quote from their abstract: "...among a convenience sample...39% of people on gender-affirming hormones"

convenience sample means "I asked my friends on social media"

And 39% on gender-affirming hormones! Yes, I know trans is all the rage now, but it's not 39% of the population! It's a highly biased sample.

ETH_start2• 4 years ago

The "39%" is a reference to the percentage of those on masculinizing hormones with breakthrough periods, not the percentage of females on masculinizing hormones.

christkv4• 4 years ago

I have to wonder that the insistence of boosting so often might lead to the inverse effect desensitising the body to the proteins just like what happens when you vaccinate against allergies, possibly leading to worse illness than if you did not boost.

The weird insistence on anti-body levels is another weird thing, just plainly ignoring immune memory.

I suspect that we are not seeing grave illness anymore in most of the population due to the immune naive population being very low and the few people dying now are in the traditional old age and immune compromised categories that also die by other respiratory viruses under similar circumstances.

Reading the science so much is fumbling in the blind (over 2 years into this). They are still pushing for under 5s to be vaccinated in some countries even though at the efficacy of the vaccine is less than 40% something that would be considered a failure in any other vaccine development and knowing the groups it he lowest risk group there is.

And before you call me anti-vaxer I had two doses of Pfizer and have had covid 3 times.

manwe1506• 4 years ago

Presumably that has not been a primary concern, since other vaccines also have historically had regular boosters and haven’t seen that happen (referring to Tdap, rabies, or flu shots)

Flu vaccine has historically also been around 25-50% effective, and is still recommended and paid for by insurance, since the benefit is measured positively to you. So there is some precedent for disappointing numbers still being promoted for their small estimated benefits in net.

christkv4• 4 years ago

Sure once a year for flu shots with different strains. This is the exact same protein again and again. Nothing like this has been done before outside of allergy vaccines from what my allergist told me who is to say at the very least skeptical about it.

loonster• 4 years ago

I suspect that we are not seeing grave illness anymore in most of the population due to the immune naive population being very low and the few people dying now are in the traditional old age and immune compromised categories that also die by other respiratory viruses under similar circumstances.

I suspect part of the reason is hospitals are no longer killing their patients through ineffective protocols.

Remember the big shortage of ventilators, and how the government is going to get GM to build them. Then it quietly went away because ventilators were killing patients.

dukeofdoom2• 4 years ago

The likely alternative is the people making the decisions knew it would harm or even kill some people, and still went ahead with it. And just set up a circle of deniability, and legal immunity in the event of any future litigation. This includes pfizer.

In Ontario the politicians said they are following the advice of chief medical officer in implementing the lockdowns. But there's a moment of dark political satire, when on hot mic one of the chief medical officers before a press conference say's "I just read what they tell me to".

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-health-official-responds-...

"The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. The series usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway tram or trolley is on course to collide with and kill a number of people (traditionally five) down the track, but a driver or bystander can intervene and divert the vehicle to kill just one person on a different track." -Wikipedia

combyn8tor• 4 years ago

"I just read what they tell me to"

Isn't it possible they're just talking about what their media advisers wrote for them? It doesn't mean they didn't set the agenda.

dukeofdoom2• 4 years ago

Who exactly set the agenda? I would like to know. Because predictably the lockdowns caused world wide instability, that directly lead to record inflation and fertilizer shortages that will put millions of people into food insecurity and at real risk of going hungry. It's hard to believe that this price was worth it.

scotty79• 4 years ago

Vaccination was basically immune system activation on demand.

If we registered and correlated every cold we catch there might be same kind of signal.

tiahura2• 4 years ago

My understanding is that the mRNA vaccines, in a round about way, trick the body into thinking it’s infected with the spike protein in order to trigger an immune system response. Is it really so surprising that one of the body’s many responses to viral infection is to alter reproductive activities? Skimming the article, I don’t see reference to other vaccines, but wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume they also cause menstrual changes?

“gender-affirming hormone treatments” - How did we get to a point where double-speak was acceptable?

permo-w• 4 years ago

How did we get to a point where double-speak was acceptable?

when was it ever not?

inquirerGeneral4• 4 years ago

That's why the j&j actually has proven to be better

inquirerGeneral4• 4 years ago

These authors are a joke

Trends in menstrual bleeding changes after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination

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