Covid-19 Vaccines and the Menstrual Cycle
covid19.nih.gov
covid19.nih.gov
It's unfeasible to carry out research on every little aspect of any medication, except for the very long term. That's why drugs get approved all the time, yet trials and studies continue for decades to account for long term and extremely rare side effects.
That said, literally anything can change the menstrual cycle (flu, stress, changes in nutrition or exercise levels), and especially given that menstrual symptoms correlate more with inflammatory markers than with actual hormone levels [0], it's to be expected that treatments that elicit an inflammatory response might have an effect in menstrual symptoms. It's good this research is done, but I doubt these changes come up as a surprise to any physician.
> Is it ethical to enforce vaccinations (via mandate) with these matters unresolved?
I think so, unless you consider to keep enforcing lockdowns, travel restrictions, or a Children-of-the-corn-light type of scenario to be ethically better.
Well, a lot of places that have high vaccination rates still have domestic restrictions, or are considering bringing them back as they deal with new surges in COVID cases. International travel restrictions are still significant, even for fully vaccinated travelers.
See: Israel, Singapore, UK, Belgium to name a few
The vaccines do appear to offer good protection against hospitalization and death, which is great, but let's be honest: they haven't been anywhere near the panacea hoped for, and a lot of the pseudo-promises made around a return to normalcy haven't been kept. Instead, the goal posts keep changing.
Isn't the latter caused in part by the former?
> Instead, the goal posts keep changing.
Have the goal posts moved or did the vaccines not make it to the goal line? You can't have it both ways.
If you plot cases versus deaths in countries like the US and UK, it's clear that the vaccines are doing what we needed them to do most and as more and more people have some level of immunity (either through vaccines or prior infection) the virus is looking less and less menacing.
It's true that COVID continues to strain hospital systems, primarily because of unvaccinated patients and vaccinated patients who are high-risk to begin with (due to age, immunocompromisation and comorbidities), but getting out of the "overwhelmed hospitals" situation is going to be really, really difficult. Resource and staffing shortages didn't just begin when COVID started. According to Becker's Hospital Review, "For most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities, operating intensive care units at 80 percent to 90 percent capacity is standard — even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit."[1]
Between the large populations of vaccinated individuals and those with natural immunity, it's getting harder and harder to justify maintaining restrictions indefinitely on the basis that SARS-CoV-2 naive individuals in certain populations (namely the elderly, overweight/obese and diabetic) and high-risk vaccinated individuals are filling ICUs that were already routinely at 80-90% capacity before the pandemic.
At some point, learning to live with the virus also involves accepting that we can't shut all of society down when ICUs fill up.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...
No good answers unfortunately, either way people suffer.
In the European countries I'm familiar with, those people are now on unemployment benefits and their contract temporarily suspended. As a tax payer, I'm fine with that. I don't want unvaccinated health workers to get in close contact with my elderly mother, thank you.
You may have seen something posted on HN recently, as I recall it was a Dutch study that compared transmission within families where the initial infectee was or was not vaccinated? And the result was basically a halving.
The viral loads in respiratory mucous at the peak are similar, sure, so from that one-dimensional metric that antivaxxers seem fixated in, it doesn't matter.
But vaccinated people:
1. Have fewer chances of getting infected.
2. The incubation period is shorter so, if infected they go around spreading it for a shorter amount of time.
3. Their disease lasts for much shorter so, again, less time spreading it around.
4. The symptoms are milder, so the chances of contaminating via coughing/sneezing are lower.
And let's not forget infecting other health workers reduces the quality of healthcare access overall.
I think more precise language is warranted here. If you're vaccinated, you have a reduced risk of becoming infected if exposed. The protection of the vaccines against infection, however, appears to decrease fairly rapidly, hence the discussion around boosters.
But if a vaccinated person (especially one who has lower neutralizing antibodies) puts themselves in environments where they inevitably have more exposures (think crowded, poorly-ventilated indoor spaces like bars) and they are not as vigilant about mask wearing, they might have a relatively higher risk of getting a breakthrough infection than even an unvaccinated person whose behavior leaves them with fewer exposures.
Sounds like they've already decided what the findings are going to point at.
1. Vaccinate LOTS of people.
2. Accept that the hospitals are full of covid patients, so people who break a leg can't get a bed.
Option 2 isn't very desirable. It only took months to find some vaccines that make option 1 clearly better than option 2. (Some other vaccines failed, but you don't hear about those.)
I think we have to face the reality that vaccines won't stop this, and the only way out is after this burns through everyone. Vaccines can help reduce personal impact on severity but doesn't seem to be helping the hospital load problem.
I live in Munich, Germany. The load on hospitals decreased as vaccination proceeded. Right now, the areas southeast of the city have the highest 7-day incidence in Germany, and even there can still grow by a factor of 4-5 before the hospitals are troubled.
If the reason for lockdowns was "flattening the curve" to not swamp hospitals, then we could have avoided lockdowns if hospitals had been able to absorb the increase in patients.
"On July 5 1948 the National Health Service took control of 480,000 hospital beds in England and Wales. An estimated 125,000 nurses and 5,000 consultants were available to care for hospital patients."
"By 1952 the situation improved, figures show there were 245,000 whole time equivalent nurses."
Source: https://www.nursingtimes.net/archive/the-birth-of-the-nhs-ju...
In 1948 the population of the UK was under 50 million. In 2020 it was over 65 million.
Source: https://www.closer.ac.uk/data/estimated-annual-population/
"The total number of hospital beds in the UK is 170,548, correct at the time of publishing this article in April 2020."
Source: https://www.interweavetextiles.com/how-many-hospital-beds-uk...
The number of nurses in the UK: "Over the last year (April 2019 to April 2020) the number of nurses has gone up by 13,502: from 282,506 to 296,008."
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-nurse-numbers-continu...
No, because you have exponential growth without lockdowns. You cannot have exponential increase in hospital beds. And, obviously, by "bed" we mean "team of qualified, registered, trained, health care professionals".
https://qcovid.org/Calculation
And hospitalisation 1 in 4484.
By contrast your risk of death from anything at that age and gender is 1 in 1106 annually:
http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html
COVID risks are extremely concentrated to the obese, unhealthy, and elderly. It doesn't make sense to vaccinate the entirety of the population especially with a leaky vaccine.