Pfizer, Moderna COVID Vaccines Safe for Pregnant Women
WebMD | March 29, 2021 | Carolyn Crist

They wanted that title. Nothing else mattered.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines are safe and effective in pregnant and breastfeeding women, according to a new study published Thursday in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The study also found that mothers can pass antibodies to their newborns.

“That’s a very important piece of information to our patients,” Andrea Edlow, MD, the senior study author and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told ABC News.

“We know that this vaccine works for you,” she added.

And they sorely wanted that quote.

The research team studied a group of 131 women who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, including 84 pregnant, 31 breastfeeding and 16 non-pregnant women. All three groups had similar high antibody levels.

Before the vaccine, did they have any antibody levels? Compared to after…

The study also found no significant differences in vaccine side effects between pregnant and non-pregnant women.

In the population of the United States, are these 16 women a significant sample?

Compared to pregnant women who had recovered from COVID-19, pregnant women who received the vaccine had “strikingly higher” antibody levels, the authors wrote. In addition, women who received the Moderna vaccine had higher antibody levels than those who received the Pfizer vaccine.

The research team also found that vaccine-generated antibodies were present in all of the umbilical cord and breast milk samples that were tested, which suggests that pregnant women and breastfeeding women can pass COVID-19 antibodies to their fetuses and newborns.

Or, it suggests, might not. More funding for more research needed…

“That is the most comforting piece of information that’s out there,” Galit Alter, MD, one of the study authors and a professor of medicine at the Ragon Institute in Massachusetts, told ABC News.

… Who likes comforting comments.

The research team found neutralizing antibodies in the blood of pregnant women, which indicates that the antibodies can kill the coronavirus.

Wait — is this science writer now giving up all pretense of knowing what antibodies are, and how they work? ? ?
.

As one commenter on the article said:

What does that tell us? That an approx. equal number of pregnant and non-pregnant women experienced dizziness, vomiting, skin rashes, etc. after receiving the vaccine? And what about the control group? How did they fare? i.e., How many of them experienced dizziness, vomiting, skin rashes, etc. after NOT receiving the vaccine?

And as ABC itself wrote:

The study had some limitations. It was small and participants were primarily white health care workers from a single city. On the other hand, it’s the largest study …

Hah! “Largest study.” I could interview people in my own social circle and come up with more women!

of a group that was left out of initial vaccine trials.

That’s very, very odd. Why? I mean, if you’re pressuring pregnant women to get the vaccine. Seems wrong.

Leaving pregnant women out of drug trials is a common practice because of safety concerns, but in the case of COVID-19, exclusion left many pregnant women confused about whether it was safe to get vaccinated.

“…Pregnancy is considered to be a risk factor for severe COVID-19, including increased risk for hospitalization and death from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of March 22, more than 80,500 pregnant women in the United States had been infected with the virus and 88 had died, the CDC found….”

88 people? That’s like Chicago on a good day. Ah, opposed to the number who died during the year from the flu? A cold? Pneumonia? Heart attacks? Diabetes? Co-morbitities with Covid-19?

Sounds like Covid ain’t so lethal.