- Hey, y'all welcome back.
I'm mama Dr. Jones,
a Board Certified ObGyn,
a mom to four,
and today I'm giving you an update on COVID vaccination
as it relates to pregnancy and fertility.
I recently made an update video on COVID-19
and its effects in pregnancy,
If you'd like to check that out
I will link it in the iCard,
or in the description box below.
This information is up to date to the best of my ability
as of the day of filming,
which is August 31st, 2021.
In this video we're covering
are COVID-19 vaccination safe in pregnancy?
Do the COVID-19 vaccinations cause infertility?
Does COVID-19 vaccination lead your body
to attack placentas?
Aren't you concerned about the long-term effects
of the vaccine?
And whether antibodies are transferred
through the placenta and through the breast milk
to the baby.
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Are COVID-19 vaccination safe in pregnancy?
We now have sufficient data to say
that COVID-19 vaccinations are safe
to be given during pregnancy.
This means the outcomes and people who are pregnant
and not vaccinated,
are similar to people who are pregnant
and they get vaccinated.
And people who are pregnant
and get vaccinated have better outcomes
if they contract COVID-19 during the pregnancy,
than people who get COVID-19 during pregnancy
and are not vaccinated.
Please, please, please get vaccinated,
even if you are pregnant.
The recommendation to get vaccinated during pregnancy,
if you have not already been vaccinated,
is not just coming from me.
This is from every major medical organization
and expert that is tasked with
taking care of people who are pregnant,
or who have recently had a baby.
Please, please, please consider this,
and if you have any questions
bring them up with your doctor or midwife.
Does the COVID-19 vaccination even work in pregnant people?
Yes, we have very good data now
to indicate that COVID-19 vaccination is not only safe,
but also effective
if you are getting it during pregnancy.
It does decrease the risk of COVID-19 infection.
Does COVID-19 vaccination cause miscarriage or stillbirth?
There is absolutely zero evidence
to indicate there's an association here.
I know this is one of the things that goes around
on the internet as disinformation, and it is not true.
JAMA recently released a review of V-safe data
that indicated that these risk rates fall
within the expected range for the baseline population,
and are not increased in people who are vaccinated.
In fact, the rate of pregnancy loss
in the largest data review that we have
on people who are vaccinated for COVID-19
during pregnancy,
indicates that their pregnancy loss rates
rank at the lower side of the range that we see
in people in the general population for pregnancy loss.
Based on this data we can say
there does not appear to be any increased risk
in miscarriage, stillbirth, pregnancy complications,
growth restriction, congenital anomalies,
or neonatal death or complications
in people who were vaccinated for COVID-19 during pregnancy.
As always,
I've linked these sources in the description box below
if you'd like to check out the data.
I will, once again, here repeat.
Many of these things are significantly increased
in people who have COVID-19,
especially severe COVID-19 during pregnancy.
The vaccine reduces the risk of COVID-19 in pregnancy,
as well as severe infection in pregnancy,
and thus reduces your risk if you are to contract COVID-19,
even if you have a breakthrough infection.
Please, please, please understand
that this can be very dangerous and devastating at baseline,
but especially if you are pregnant.
Does COVID-19 vaccination cause infertility?
This is another one that is spread over and over
as misinformation on the internet.
Why?
Because it's effective and it scares people.
So, what do we know?
Earlier this year I did a video
about where this idea originated
and why it was biologically completely implausible.
The idea that these two proteins are so similar
that your antibodies could mount an immune response
is a bit of a extremist claim.
They do have some similarities,
a lot of viruses have similarities.
They would need to be extremely similar,
and we're just not finding that
when you actually look at the genetic sequencing
of the spike protein and the syncytin-1 protein
that they're talking about.
I also discussed in that video
that the person who is spreading the information
has no expertise in pregnancy or birth,
and has no understanding of basic pregnancy physiology
based on the fact that they presumed
that COVID-19 antibodies would attack the placenta
and that this would cause infertility.
I probably have a very large viewership right now going,
"That doesn't make any sense
because if it attacks the placenta,
that wouldn't cause infertility
it would cause pregnancy loss."
And you're right.
Why?
The placenta is not even functioning
until nine weeks into the pregnancy,
so if this theory was true, it's not,
it would actually cause miscarriage not infertility.
But there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccination
causes either of those.
Despite the lack of biologic plausibility
we studied it anyway,
and this study revealed
that if you compared people going through IVF treatments
and having an embryo transfer,
and you looked at a group of people with no antibodies,
natural antibodies from a previous COVID infection,
and antibodies from a vaccination,
there were no difference in pregnancy rates
across these three groups.
Meaning, neither COVID infection in the past
nor vaccination in the past,
decreases your chances of pregnancy in the future.
Additionally,
we also can review the data from the original studies
on the vaccination,
the number of unplanned pregnancies did not differ
between the patients who had received the placebo
and the patients who had received the COVID vaccine.
There was no difference.
If these vaccinations were affecting fertility
you would expect to see a far lower number
of accidental pregnancies,
and a far lower number of pregnancies in the IVF study
in the people who had been vaccinated.
So, we've established that theory has
no biologic plausibility, no data,
and sufficient data to say it is nonsense.
Of course, once this person was proven wrong
by my biologic possibility information in the original video
several months ago,
and now with hard data,
they decided that they would change their tune and say,
"Well, it may not cause infertility
but COVID vaccine antibodies
definitely cause placental attack,
which could lead to pregnancy complications
and miscarriage."
Fortunately, we expected this,
people who spread misinformation when they're proven wrong
they switch and they spread it in a different way,
especially if the campaign was effective the first time.
So, we studied this and even almost before it could
come out of this person's mouth, we proved it wrong.
Now we have a study
that looks specifically at the histology of placentas
and compares placentas from people who were vaccinated
to people who were unvaccinated at the time of delivery.
And what that study found,
based on four histological markers of placental damage,
is that there was no difference
between histological indicators of placental damage
in the group which was vaccinated
and the group which was not.
Interestingly,
there was actually an increased risk of inflammation
in the placentas which came from unvaccinated people.
However, the relevance of that information at this point
is completely unclear,
so we're not going to talk about it at length.
As I said earlier, we've already figured out
that based on the data we have
there is also no increased risk of miscarriage
or pregnancy loss,
based on a huge review of the currently given vaccinations
in people who get the vaccine while pregnant.
All of these studies are linked in the description box below
if you would like to review them.
What do I have to say to the people who say,
"We don't know the long-term effects of the vaccination.
You can't say this until we have three years of data
or five years of data."?
This is arbitrary.
You can't just come up with an arbitrary amount of time
for long-term complications.
We need to look at this from a historical perspective,
as well as an absolute and relative risk perspective.
Never in the history of vaccinations
has there been a vaccine
which was safe and effective early on,
and then three years later
we found a random severe side effect
that just suddenly popped up,
MRNA, specifically, is what people seem to be worried about.
MRNA is degraded in your body within hours to days,
and certainly is gone within a couple of weeks.
And all that remains is your body's response,
meaning antibodies to protect you against COVID-19.
Vaccine side effects are known to occur
mostly in the first few days
but maybe up to a couple of months
after you get the vaccine.
So, no,
we do not have to wait three years or five years,
or some other arbitrary number
that someone who has no idea what they're talking about
comes up with,
to decide that COVID-19 vaccinations
do not cause infertility.
We have the data,
we have historical precedence for this.
And even if we didn't,
I think it is extremely important to look at this
from a relative and absolute risk standpoint.
In the short-term COVID-19 is dangerous,
it can cause extreme illness and death
in higher amounts, by far,
than any vaccine side effects that we are seeing.
In the short term
vaccines are known to be both safe and effective
at preventing these problems.
In the long-term
we know that a history of COVID infection
can cause major issues,
we also know that historically
many viruses have complications
which go on long-term or pop up later on in life.
Vaccinations have never done that,
and there is absolutely no data
to indicate that that will be different
with this vaccination.
When you are weighing the relative risk and benefit
for somebody who is either wanting to be pregnant,
currently pregnant, might ever be pregnant,
or even doesn't even wanna get pregnant
but just is concerned about the things
that people are saying,
the vaccine outweighs the virus by magnitudes
as far as safety goes.
Please, please, please protect yourself
and protect your fertility
by staying alive and getting vaccinated.
Are antibodies transferred to the baby
through breast milk or the placenta?
We now have really good data to say that,
yes, antibodies do go through the placenta to the baby
and through breast milk to the baby.
As far as how much protection this actually provides,
we aren't sure yet.
Step one is figuring out if it happens,
which we know it does.
Step two is figuring out what the level is
that is needed for protection,
and if this antibody transfer
actually conveys that amount and protects the baby
after birth,
either through transfer through the placenta
or breastfeeding.
We are working on that.
Step three is figuring out how long this protection lasts
and the optimum time for a baby or child to be vaccinated,
and that's something that we're working on as well.
I do think it is incredibly encouraging
that we are seeing the antibodies transferred
through the placenta and through the breast milk
to the baby.
I hope that you learned something today.
If you did, please leave a like,
send this to a friend, give a comment,
anything to help it get out to more people
and combat the misinformation that we are seeing
everywhere on the internet.
Thank you for being here today.
If you're new and you'd like to subscribe,
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I will see you next Monday.
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