An international study of COVID-19 in pregnancy found that neonates of booster-vaccinated mothers had less risk of being infected with COVID-19 compared to those of unvaccinated mothers. Babies of booster-vaccinated mothers also had the lowest rates of preterm birth, respiratory distress syndrome and days in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Neonates of unvaccinated mothers, however, died twice as frequently as those of vaccinated mothers. The study was conducted when omicron was the variant of concern.
"Our study demonstrates the clear benefits of COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women and their infants," said co-author Jagjit Teji, MD, neonatologist and site Principal Investigator at Lurie Children's, and Health System Clinician of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "As the protective effect of COVID-19 vaccination decreases with time, to ensure that newborns are maximally protected against COVID-19, women should receive a vaccine or booster dose no more than 14 weeks before the expected date of delivery."
The best thing since sliced bread, eh? They go on to say about the study:
The study involved 40 hospitals in 18 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, Uruguay and the U.S.).
The devil is in the details, as usual. If you look at the study itself, it provides this information about the studied cohort of “birthing people”:
Wow! The more you vaccinate, the older you get, but also the more you drop that nasty smoking habit? Also, the previous pregnancies with un- and under-jabbed somehow had worse outcomes across the board. So, the Covid vaccines or lack thereof have retrospective effect??? As you can clearly see, there is more than one confounder disclosed in this table alone. The choice of participants in the “study” cohorts is clearly skewed in favour of the vaccinated, right off the bat. Didn’t the study authors notice this? Seems like by conscious design to me. Pecunia non olet, as Romans used to say.
Even then, the gastrointestinal conditions and congenial malformations (!) of babies born to vaccinated and over-vaccinated mothers is worse than those born to smoking unvaccinated. To their credit, the "study" authors were too honest and didn't delete these lines:
What’s more, there is a breakdown by country of tested positive for Covid mothers and babies:
But where’s the breakdown of mothers by country and vaccination status? None to be found in the “study” text. I bet it would have revealed a further confounder or two. And where are the statistics about interrupted pregnancies?
The existence of confounders is an important quantitative explanation why correlation does not imply causation. Some notations are explicitly designed to identify the existence, possible existence, or non-existence of confounders in causal relationships between elements of a system.
Confounds are threats to internal validity.
But who, in their sane mind, would look up the “study”, let alone try to make any sense of it? Don’t do your own research, trust the science! Remember the headline, and remember to get your booster less than 14 weeks before giving birth! Because that is the estimated duration of the latest jab’s “protection”, minus any adverse effects (including death, in extremely rare cases, that can be safely ignored).
Survivorship bias? Less vigorous fetuses fail due to vaccine, leaving this type of bias? It's only logic. Bet they did not report any rates on fetal demise, miscarriage rates, spontaneous abortions. That's a huge tell.
That doesn't even make any sense. Could they explain the mechanism by which the shot benefits the infants? It doesn't add up that a shot designed to protect against a respiratory disease, and doesn't even do that, would protect against adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Survivorship bias? Less vigorous fetuses fail due to vaccine, leaving this type of bias? It's only logic. Bet they did not report any rates on fetal demise, miscarriage rates, spontaneous abortions. That's a huge tell.
That doesn't even make any sense. Could they explain the mechanism by which the shot benefits the infants? It doesn't add up that a shot designed to protect against a respiratory disease, and doesn't even do that, would protect against adverse pregnancy outcomes.