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When Vicki Singer posted a photo of her sticker proclaiming that she had been “COVID-19 VACCINATED” on Twitter, she did not expect to be attacked. At just over thirteen weeks pregnant, she just wanted to spread awareness and information about how to be vaccinated during pregnancy.
Then the trolls came.
“This poor future mom thinks it’s important to roll the dice and experiment with herself and her baby’s DNA,” wrote a stranger. Another responded with a suggestion that pregnant women should not be vaccinated.
Singer, an administrative assistant to epidemiologists at the University of Washington in St. Louis, decided to get vaccinated after talking to her obstetrical gynecologists. Her husband teaches personally in high school, and Singer has cerebral palsy and asthma, which, as her obstetrical gynecologists warned, could put her at greater risk if she caught COVID-19. Pregnant people also face a greater chance of becoming very sick and dying if they take COVID-19, research has found.
For other pregnant women who spoke to VICE News, the decision on whether to be vaccinated was less clear.
Neither Moderna nor Pfizer-BioNTech intentionally included pregnant women in their studies, and until recently the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control disagreed over whether pregnant women should be vaccinated. The lack of consensus has created confusion about the potential dangers of getting the vaccine compared to not vaccinating, both for a pregnant woman and her baby. And even when prospective parents finally make a decision, they are usually judged.
“Of course, I cannot guarantee that nothing will happen. I can guarantee that it is much less than if I had COVID, ”Singer told VICE News. “Having people on the Internet come up and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong’ – I’m like, ‘What? I’m so sorry? What?'”
It is common for pregnant women to be left out of biomedical research in the United States, but some evidence suggests that vaccination is safe for them. Twenty-three people who participated in the Pfizer vaccine study became pregnant after being vaccinated or had early pregnancies to be detected. Of those 23, 12 received the actual vaccine other than a placebo; although more follow-up is needed, none of these women reported any serious side effects.
Still, WHO originally recommended that pregnant women not take the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines (unless they were at high risk of contracting COVID-19). Other major medical groups – including the CDC and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists – disagreed. Instead, they asked health professionals to let the pregnant women decide whether to roll up their sleeves.
“Having people on the Internet come up and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong’ – I’m like, ‘What? I’m so sorry? What?'”
After a mass outcry and rampant confusion over why, exactly, doctors failed to reach an agreement, WHO changed its mind in late January. “We have no specific reason to believe that there will be specific risks that outweigh the benefits of vaccination for pregnant women,” the organization said in a statement.
Even though she was a Columbia University physician specializing in infectious diseases, Emily Miller was initially unsure whether she would receive the vaccine. After treating patients during the COVID-19 cases of New York City’s overwhelming spring wave, she knew firsthand how devastating the disease could be. But her pregnancy complicated the decision.
“I remember asking the women I work with a lot, who were not pregnant, but were mothers and also [infectious disease] doctors, ‘What would you do? Would you wait? Would you get the vaccine? ‘”Recalled Miller. Miller’s OB-GYN pointed out that, as she was still seeing patients with COVID-19, she still had a high risk of getting the virus.
“It made sense to me to go ahead and do that,” said Miller. “The scientist in me was unable to find a reasonable way for the vaccine to harm the baby.”
Vaccines are usually safe, and pregnant women have been vaccinated routinely against a variety of illnesses since the 1960s. But it may take years or even decades for all the effects of the rapidly developed coronavirus vaccines – if any – to be known. The spectrum of thalidomide also haunts the medical profession: prescribed to treat nausea in pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s, the drug caused severe birth defects in thousands of children.
But so far, about 10,000 pregnant women have been vaccinated with Moderna or Pfizer vaccines in the USA. Last Monday, Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease physician in the United States, said “there were no warning signs”.
A study recently published in JAMA Pediatrics also suggests that pregnant women may be able to transmit antibodies to the coronavirus in their children. The study found that among 83 new mothers in Pennsylvania, 87 percent of their newborns’ umbilical cords had antibodies, which can offer children some protection against the virus. In an editorial next to the study, a researcher proposed that “maternal vaccination” could help newborns to acquire antibodies.
“No one really knows the right answer in this scenario for sure,” said Danya Roshdy, a specialist in clinical pharmacy who deals with infectious diseases in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is also pregnant. “And many pregnant women go to their providers and ask these questions, but they don’t get a straight answer.”
Because Roshdy helps care for patients with COVID, she knew exactly how much damage the virus could do. She already knew that she wanted to be vaccinated when she talked to the doctor himself, who had no reservations.
“The cases of COVID in my area were increasing, and the risk of contracting COVID seemed to be very high at that point,” said Roshdy. “I felt that I was more concerned with actually getting COVID and getting very sick from COVID and having negative effects on my baby from the COVID virus itself, compared to the vaccine.”
After her two injections, Roshdy had only mild side effects. For about 24 hours after the second dose, she developed chills and aching joints.
Miller received his first dose of the vaccine in December and the second in January, after his healthy daughter was born. When she posted a picture of her pregnant, in the middle of the photo, on Facebook, a handful of pregnant friends and colleagues asked for advice on whether they should also be vaccinated.
“I think I have been the right person for many of my pregnant medical friends, because I am also pregnant [infectious disease] doctor, and many of them were having these same difficulties, ”said Miller. “For each woman, it’s a different type of risk-benefit analysis.”
Emily Miller, a Columbia University doctor specializing in infectious diseases, receiving her vaccine COVID-19. (Photo courtesy of Emily Miller)