Covid vaccine during pregnancy

[Eleano]

I couldn't find a recent thread so I'm posting a new one.

I'm 11 weeks pregnant and have had no encouragement from my midwife to get the Covid vaccine. I've booked it for tomorrow and wanted to get some opinions.

I got vaccinated for Covid a few times when everyone was being called for vaccination and have no issue with being vaccinated but I'm nervous now that I'm pregnant since it seems that most pregnant women don't get vaccinated due to fear and a lack of guidance.

I heard a few womens' midwives told them to avoid it since pregnant women weren't in the clinical trials and since the current variant isn't severe.

However, my husband's a teacher and brings Covid home about twice a year and I catch it every time and it makes me ill for about a week.

I'm the only pregnant woman I know in my social circle getting the vaccine. Am I doing the right thing?

Going round in circles a tad but as I said - you can access the studies that were used to inform recommendations and read them for yourself.

However as pointed out, public health recommendations are the work of a team of experts and take months to compile - they use an extraodinary amount of resources and require a fair bit of experience/training. Each study will need to be read and critically evaluated by multiple reviewers, all evidence synthesised, and this requires a fair bit of expertise and training to do.

I'm a working scientist and am happy to delegate decision making for things I'm not an expert in (i.e., whether my child should have the HPV vaccine) because it simply isn't possible for an individual to review the evidence to the same degree a team of experts can.

The fact that this robust process has been carried out not just in the UK, but by countries worldwide, and they have all come to the same decision, speaks for itself. As I said, you would have to believe thousands of scientists/clinicians globally are either incomeptent or lying, which IMO is a bit of a stretch.

you would have to believe thousands of scientists/clinicians globally are either incomeptent or lying, which IMO is a bit of a stretch

Probably not the place to get into it here, @henlee , but I disagree. There are plenty of common financial and political interests which exert effects at a large number of points in the process. Industry funding of trials, of researchers, of institutions, of journals, of media outlets, etc etc, can introduce bias at numerous levels. It is well established in numerous contexts, and complex. Personally, my faith in the overall process has taken a large knock. I still defer to "expert consensus" for quite a few things, but am far more sceptical than I used to be. I, too, have highly relevant training, for what that's worth.

(my point being that you don't have to postulate some ridiculous Machiavellian conspiracy to feel that expert consensus is not a reflection of some kind of scientific "truth")

There are currently ~39 observational studies and ~4 RCTs demonstrating vaccine safety and effectiveness in pregnant woman (in addition to data released by pharmaceutical companies which I appreciate you will not want to trust). Each of these independent 43 studies would have involved 100+ study staff.

Data from these studies has been independently reviewed and assessed by public health bodies of countries worldwide, again involving large teams of experts to synthesise and QA data (as described in detail in my PP). I have already outlined how risk of bias would be assessed and included in a review of evidence.

Yes I do think you're suggesting a bit of a "Machiavellian conspiracy" to suggest every one of these experts are either biased, incompetent or lying, and are recommending a vaccine to pregnant woman when we can not be confident in safety @vinegarasacleaner

Midwives told them to avoid it since pregnant women weren't in the clinical trials

This is a shocking comment by the midwives. Pregnant women are never in any clinical trials! Not just Covid!

There is no evidence of higher risk of miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy following vaccination against Covid-19 or infection with the disease. This research considers data from over 500,000 (yes that’s over half a million) pregnancies.

https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2022/no-increased-miscarriage-risk-due-to-vaccine

Vaccination against covid-19 during pregnancy is not associated with a higher risk of preterm birth, small for gestational age at birth, or stillbirth. This study looked at 85,162 births.

https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-071416

There is no evidence that Covid vaccinations are associated with miscarriage. This paper looks at data from 149 ,685 women.

https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/38/5/840/7043098

Oh, you're that type on anti-vaxxer.

Yes, you are. Our daughter had hers whilst pregnant, no problems at all. Her friend didn’t, gave birth 2 months later with Covid. Her partner had it too and wasn’t allowed in to the hospital. I don’t know whether that’s still policy.

I had the first 2 vaccines while pregnant (didn't know I was pregnant for the first one) but was advised to have the second as at the time they thought covid in pregnancy can make you more poorly.

Yes I do think you're suggesting a bit of a "Machiavellian conspiracy" to suggest every one of these experts are either biased, incompetent or lying, and are recommending a vaccine to pregnant woman when we can not be confident in safety @vinegarasacleaner

Well then, I think you are: 1) creating a straw man (the processes I mention absolutely do not require conscious bias or "lying" in individuals); 2) unfortunately being rather naive about the capacity of risk of bias assessments, etc., to counteract ingrained systemic processes. Same old.

In any case, have a good day - suspect neither of us has time debate this much further, and this isn't the place!

Oh now the replies are just a jumble of terms - you are not logically replying to my posts @vinegarasacleaner

As I said, there are ~39 observational studies and ~4 RCTs demonstrating vaccine safety and effectiveness in pregnant woman (in addition to data released by pharmaceutical companies which I appreciate you will not want to trust).

Data from these studies has been independently reviewed and assessed by public health bodies of countries worldwide, again involving large teams of experts to synthesise and QA data, which includes assessment of the factors that can introduce bias that you have mentioned.

To simply sweep away all this evidence, and the opinions of tens of thousands of experts, is ridiculous. There is fraud, bias, and low quality methods in science, yes of course, and I can give tons of examples. But to suggest ALL these studies, ALL these scientists, ALL these clinicians from independent sources, multiple countries etc are incompetent or corrupt is ridiculous.

Just to clarify, pregnant women are asbolutely allowed aspirin and some like myself are asked to take it for various reasons, such as to increase blood flow to the placenta.

Op, I didn’t take it as my midwives didn’t suggest I did. I’m aware of other trusts that aren’t recommending it either as long as you’ve had at least 2 other vaccines. The advice seems to vary by trust so feel free to do whatever you feel is best. I got covid in my third trimester and the only symptom I got was a bad cough. But again it affects people differently. I did get the flu and whooping cough vaccines.

I, too, have highly relevant training, for what that's worth.

I find it hard to believe a research scientist would dismiss huge amounts of evidence (>45 individual research studies) that show SARS-COV-2 vaccination in pregnancy is associated with better outcomes than non-vaccination.

It's ridiculous to try and claim it's all either made up or cannot be trusted @vinegarasacleaner

As has been laboured on the thread - as an individual you simply cannot conduct evidence synthesis in the same robust way a team of researchers do over a period of months, even you happen to be an epidemiologist yourself (which again, I find hard to believe).

I’d also like to know which source you’d deem to be far more trustworthy than consensus opinion@vinegarasacleaner. I suspect your source is far more unregulated/heavily biased/in it for profit. So why not question that too? Particularly when you’d want to give the safest advice possible to a pregnant mother and her unborn child.

To anyone genuinely interested, I'd suggest reading the HART group's correspondence around this issue. Here's a starting point:

RCOG still pushing covid vaccines to pregnant women – HART (hartgroup.org)

And please note whether dismissals of the concerns are based on overgeneralised or ad hominem attacks. If you're pregnant, I'd suggest reading with an open mind, following up the responses, and making your own mind up.

NB query it all - including this source, of course. But read chains of correspondence, and see what you think. Good luck to all in making what are undoubtedly tricky decisions.

Ah - you've totally revealed yourself with the latest post @vinegarasacleaner As you know, HART have been pushing vaccine disinformation and conspiracy theories since the beginning of the pandemic, and contain some of the biggest names in the for-profit vaccine disinformation industry.

There is absolutely no robust evidence behind any of their claims. Please see the endless threads about them on MN, and scientists commentary on places like twitter.

Shame on you for using a parenting forum to target pregnant woman - fake claims like this cause otherwise preventable harm and death, whilst those at the top of the anti-vaccine circuit profit.

I am sorry this thread has been taken over by nonsense like this, and will repeat that we have a wealth of evidence (>45) independent studies demonstrating vaccine safety and efficacy in pregnancy - it is safer for both mums and babies to be vaccinated against COVID than not.

This is why countries worldwide include the SARS-COV-2 vaccine in those recommended in pregnancy.

I was told no aspirin for a sore throat while pregnant, seems low doses are fine but "high doses" e.g. as a painkiller they recommend against taking a chance: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/aspirin-for-pain-relief/pregnancy-breastfeeding-and-fertility-while-taking-aspirin-for-pain-relief/

And please note whether dismissals of the concerns are based on overgeneralised or ad hominem attacks

Pointing out that none of HARTs claims have been evidence-based is not "ad hominem".

I am an epidemiologist and have followed the anti-vaccine groups closely during the pandemic, and can say with full confidence I have not seen a single claim from this group that has been backed up by robust evidence.

It's unacceptable to be spamming a parenting forum to specifically target pregnant women with this nonsense.

There are endless threads debunking their crap, including ideas that the vaccines cause COVID, and that they have been used a "depopulation" method. I cannot believe people are still being taken in by them.

I got both covid vaccines when they first came out 2 years ago whilst I was pregnant and all is well with my little girl

HARTs claims are without merit.

They're not getting answered because they are based on (to put it as charitably as I can) misunderstanding of what the data actually means

HART, now we see you. They are as suspect as Us For Them bogus 'grassroots' group. The time is now here for these idiots to be exposed for the Koch group dupes they are.