Covidiot Trumpanzees.
Risking the lives of unborn babies for political ends.
Risking the lives of unborn babies for political ends.
About the last thing the politically-motivated, far right antivaxxers covidiots are interested in is protecting human life. With characteristic hypocrisy, many of the same frauds are also active campaigners against legal abortions and a woman's right to choose which, together with COVID-19 denialism and antivaxx conspiracism, have become major talking points in the Trumpanzee far right playlist.
The hypocrisy of these frauds was revealed yesterday in a study which shows there was a huge spike in the number of premature births during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when women infected with the virus spontaneously aborted their baby. The same study also shows that in those areas where the vaccine uptake was high, the premature birth rate quickly fell back to pre-pandemic levels, but in areas where uptake was low, it took another year to return to pre-pandemic levels.
The study was carried out by Professor Jenna Nobles of Wisconsin–Madison University and Professor Florencia Torche, of Stanford University who have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
As the Wisconsin–Madison University press release explains:
COVID-19 caused an alarming surge in premature births, but vaccines were key to returning the early birth rate to pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis of California birth records.The two researchers have published their findings, open access in PNAS:
But the first two years of the pandemic alone were far worse for many pregnancies, according to findings Nobles and co-author Florencia Torche, a Stanford University sociology professor, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The effect of maternal COVID infection from the onset of the pandemic into 2023 is large, increasing the risk of preterm births over that time by 1.2 percentage points. To move the needle on preterm birth that much is akin to a disastrous environmental exposure, like weeks of breathing intense wildfire smoke.
Professor Jenna Nobles, co-author
Sociology professor, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The virus that causes COVID-19 endangers pregnancies by causing immune and inflammation responses, and via deterioration of the placenta. One consequence is early interruption of the pregnancy and birth well in advance of the end of the expected 39- to 40-week gestation.
As the virus spread from July to November of 2020, the likelihood that a mother with COVID-19 in California would give birth more than three weeks before the due date was 5.4 percentage points higher than anticipated — 12.3% instead of 6.9% — according to the new study.
The researchers measured the impact of the pandemic with the help of birth records for California’s nearly 40 million people, using information on birth timing and the comparison of sibling births to help control for the pandemic’s disparate impacts on different demographic groups. They found the excess risk of preterm birth fell slightly in early 2021 before dropping steeply in 2022, at which point maternal COVID-19 infection in pregnancy caused no excess risk of preterm birth for infants.
In ZIP codes with the highest vaccination rates, the excess risk of preterm birth declines much faster. By summer 2021, having COVID-19 in pregnancy had no effect on preterm birth risk in these communities. It takes almost a year longer for that to happen in the ZIP codes with the lowest vaccine uptake. That highlights how protective COVID vaccines have been. By increasing immunity faster, early vaccination uptake likely prevented thousands of preterm births in the U.S.
And we found similar increases, of about 38%, in the risk of very preterm birth — that is pre-32 weeks — when a child is likely to need neonatal intensive care, with the possibility of developmental delays and serious implications for their families as well.
Professor Jenna Nobles.Vaccines contributed to that decrease, the researchers say, an effect that jumps out when the birth records are divided up geographically.One big contributor to vaccine hesitancy is that people are worried about safety for the fetus and about the ability to get pregnant. We already know there is very little evidence of adverse effects of vaccination on fetal development. The results here are compelling evidence that what will actually harm the fetus is not getting vaccinated. That’s a message practitioners can share with concerned patients.
This is still an evolving epidemic, and the rate of vaccine boosters among pregnant people right now is very low. The question is, how many more iterations of viral evolution does this need to escape the immunity that we have? It’s miraculous and incredible that we’re now down to essentially zero additional preterm births, but it does not indicate that it’s going to be that way in perpetuity.
Professor Jenna Nobles.
Preterm birth is associated with a host of short- and long-term health problems and deficiencies for the children and their families. It’s the leading contributor to infant mortality, and cutting short development in the womb can require additional medical attention that costs, on average, more than $80,000 per child. Preterm birth by even just a few weeks reduces expected educational attainment, health and earnings as an adult.
The evidence showing the positive effects of vaccination in preventing premature births could help allay some of the most prominent concerns voiced as COVID-19 vaccines became available to pregnant patients.
The results should be a compelling argument in favor of getting vaccinations and boosters, according to the researchers, even after COVID-related premature birth risk ebbed in California.
SignificanceSo demonstrating that Trumpanzee antivaxxer Covidiots have little or no regard for human life, especially the life of unborn babies and the longer-term welfare of children. Antivax and COVID conspiracist campaigns were all about fooling people into giving power to Trump-supporting far-right extremists with a hidden agenda. The increased risk to the health and welfare of children is mere collateral damage.
The effects of COVID-19 on infant health may be among the most enduring legacies of the pandemic. Using linked population-level data on siblings born between 2014 and 2023 in birthing facilities with confirmed universal testing, we establish that maternal COVID-19 infection during pregnancy causally, and substantially, increased the risk of preterm birth—an infant outcome with lifelong consequences for health and socioeconomic well-being. We show that this effect disappeared by 2022 and demonstrate that the disappearance of this effect happened almost a year earlier in places that were early adopters of COVID-19 vaccination. The availability of vaccines and the decision to use them may have reduced a serious health burden for the next generation of US children.
Abstract
In utero exposure to COVID-19 infection may lead to large intergenerational health effects. The impact of infection exposure has likely evolved since the onset of the pandemic as new variants emerge, immunity from prior infection increases, vaccines become available, and vaccine hesitancy persists, such that when infection is experienced is as important as whether it is experienced. We examine the changing impact of COVID-19 infection on preterm birth and the moderating role of vaccination. We offer the first plausibly causal estimate of the impact of maternal COVID-19 infection by using population data with no selectivity, universal information on maternal COVID-19 infection, and linked sibling data. We then assess change in this impact from 2020 to 2023 and evaluate the protective role of COVID-19 vaccination on infant health. We find a substantial adverse effect of prenatal COVID-19 infection on the probability of preterm birth. The impact was large during the first 2 y of the pandemic but had fully disappeared by 2022. The harmful impact of COVID-19 infection disappeared almost a year earlier in zip codes with high vaccination rates, suggesting that vaccines might have prevented thousands of preterm births. The findings highlight the need to monitor the changing consequences of emerging infectious diseases over time and the importance of mitigation strategies to reduce the burden of infection on vulnerable populations.
Fig. 1.
Statistical models for the association between COVID-19 infection during pregnancy and preterm birth. California births July 2020 to February 2023. Solid and hollow circles are parameter estimates, vertical lines are 95% CIs. Models 1 to 2 based on linear probability models with birth facility and birth month fixed effects. Model 2 includes controls for maternal sociodemographic characteristics [educational attainment (less than high school diploma, high school graduate, some college, bachelor degree (BA), graduate degree), race/ethnicity (NH Black, NH White, Hispanic, Asian, Other), foreign-born status, age (less than 20 y of age, 20 to 24, 25 to 29, 30 to 34, 35 to 39, 40, and older), quartile of zip code of residence socioeconomic (SES) disadvantage, and parity (1st, 2nd, 3rd, or higher order)] and risk factors for preterm birth (prepregnancy smoking, prepregnancy hypertension, prepregnancy diabetes, asthma, large fibroid tumors). Model 3 uses a within-mother fixed-effects estimator comparing sibling(s) exposed to maternal COVID-19 infection during pregnancy with unexposed sibling(s). Controls for mother’s educational attainment, age, quartile of the zip code of residence SES disadvantage, birth order, and month of birth included. Model 4 uses a mother fixed-effects estimator and restricts the sample to birth facilities with confirmed COVID-19 universal testing at the time of delivery. Model 5 is a falsification fixed-effects test based on a randomly selected sample of births with identical birth date distribution as the treated siblings and compared them to their (mostly older) siblings. Robust SEs clustered by birthing person. Models 1 to 2 use data from January 2018 to February 2023, models 3 to 5 use data from January 2014 to February 2023 to allow for a wider interpregnancy interval. Births occurring March 2020 to June 2020 excluded from the analysis due to unobserved maternal COVID-19 infections. Sample restricted to singleton births.
Source: California Natality Data.
Fig. 2. Sibling fixed-effects models for the effect of COVID-19 infection during pregnancy on preterm birth (<37 wk of gestation) over the course of the pandemic. California births July 2020 to February 2023. Solid and hollow circles are parameter estimates, vertical lines are 95% CIs. Fixed-effects model comparing sibling(s) exposed to maternal COVID-19 infection during pregnancy with unexposed sibling(s). Controls for mother’s educational attainment, age, quartile of zip code of residence SES disadvantage, birth order, and year of birth included. Robust SEs clustered by birthing person. Births occurring March 2020 to June 2020 excluded from the analysis due to unobserved maternal COVID-19 infections. Sample restricted to singleton births.Source: California Natality Data.
Fig. 3.
COVID-19 vaccine uptake across zip code areas in California January 2021 to February 2023. Vaccine uptake defined as proportion of the population fully vaccinated (total number of people fully vaccinated divided by total population). Zip codes were sorted by vaccine uptake rate achieved by March 2020 and divided into four equal groups weighted by zip code population size. Fully vaccinated individuals defined as those with 2 Pfizer doses>=17 d apart, 2 Moderna doses>=24 d apart, 1 dose of J&J, a combination of Pfizer and Moderna doses>=17 d apart, three or more vaccination records, or only one dose in IRIS labeled as dose number 2.Source: COVID-19 Vaccine Progress Dashboard Data by zip Code,
California Department of Public Health.
Fig. 4.
Sibling fixed-effects models for the effect of COVID-19 infection during pregnancy on preterm birth over the course of the pandemic by quintile of vaccination rates at the zip code level (top and bottom quintiles). California births July 2020 to February 2023. Solid and hollow circles are parameter estimates, vertical lines are 95% CIs. Fixed-effects model comparing sibling(s) exposed to maternal COVID-19 infection during pregnancy with unexposed sibling(s), Controls for mother’s educational attainment, age, quartile of zip code of residence SES disadvantage, birth order and year of birth are added. Separate models estimated for Top (highest vaccination rates) and Bottom (lowest vaccination rates) quintiles. Vaccination rate quintiles based on the proportion of population fully vaccinated by zip code area of residence. Births occurring March 2020 to June 2020 excluded from the analysis due to unobserved maternal COVID-19 infections. Robust SEs clustered by birthing person. Sample restricted to singleton births.
Source: California Natality Data.
Torche, F. & Nobles, J.
Vaccination, immunity, and the changing impact of COVID-19 on infant health
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 120(49) e2311573120. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2311573120
Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PNAS. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
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