The Glasgow Royal Fertility Clinic in Scotland has now branched out, with its latest move, into Eugenics.
It announced, the following.
So, if you are vaccinated, you get fertility treatment; if you’re not vaccinated, you don’t.
They are basing their decision, that has been nationally agreed, on research from UK.
Figure 1 UK Key information on COVID-19 in pregnancy
Fig. 1 Shows the UK data used to inform the Scottish decision to remove fertility treatment from women.
The Scots quoted several data sets to support their decision to ban unvaccinated women from fertility care.
The Scottish Intensive Care Society Report, published on 13 October, highlighted that of the 89 COVID-19 positive pregnant women who were admitted to critical care between December 2020 and end September 2021, 88 were unvaccinated, 1 was partially vaccinated, and none were fully vaccinated.
And the following.
the latest evidence from the UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS) and the Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK) shows that unvaccinated pregnant women and their babies have died after admission to hospital with Covid-19 and 98 % of pregnant women in ICU with Covid-19 are unvaccinated. We also know that of all the women who have died during pregnancy or up to 6 weeks after birth, 88% of them were unvaccinated.
But the data they present only tells half the story and, as everyone knows, you need both sides of a story to make an informed decision.
Deceptive Numbers
In order to get a handle on what the real numbers are, we can use the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 51. Where it states the following.
In the overall 8 month period between January and August 2021 a total of 355,299 women gave birth of whom 24,759 had received at least 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine prior to delivery
Source p25
That time period is very close to the UKOSS study above, and both span 8 months.
By combining the data we get a fuller picture of the risks for unvaccinated pregnant women.
During two almost identical study periods, out of 355,299 women that gave birth, 24,759 were vaccinated with at least one dose. Approximately 235 ended up in the ICU, with 98.7% of those being unvaccinated.
There are two ways to look at that data. The snake oil salesman way - relative risk reduction.. and the correct way, absolute risk reduction. Most people know those terms now. The relative risk reduction is a deceptive measure used to make drugs seem better than they actually are. That comes out at 82%.
The more informative stat is ARR (absolute risk reduction). It informs us of the actual risk reduction between the vaccinated and unvaccinated pregnant women for ending up in ICU.
Hold your breath..
It’s a grand total of 0.058% difference in risk between the vaccinated an unvaccinated ended up in the ICU.
I suppose we could round that up to 6/100ths of one percent difference.
And, of course, caveat: we are overlapping by one month between data sets but also the numbers are skewed in favour of the vaccinated. The number of vaccinated would be less in the beginning of the study period, and if that was taken into account, it would reduce the denominator for the vaccinated; and increase the denominator for the unvaccinated, resulting in an even less risk difference between the groups.
Figure 2 Vaccine uptake in women giving birth in UK
Fig. 2 shows the vaccine uptake of women giving birth with significantly less vaccinated in the earlier months.
Source p25
No difference between vaccinated & unvaccinated
In fact, the UK government in the latest report goes out of its way to tell us there’s no difference between the vaccinated & unvaccinated pregnant groups.
The stillbirth rate for vaccinated women who gave birth (3.35 per 1,000, 95%CI 2.71 to 4.15) was similar to the rate for unvaccinated women (3.60 per 1,000, 95%CI 3.40 to 3.81) giving birth between January and August 2021 (Figure 8). In the same period, the proportion of vaccinated women giving birth to babies with low birthweight (5.28%, 95%CI 5.01 to 5.57) was comparable to the proportion for unvaccinated women (5.36%, 95%CI 5.29 to 5.44) (Figure 9). Similarly, 0.93% (95%CI 0.82 to 1.06) of vaccinated pregnant women and 0.80% (95%CI 0.77 to 0.83) of unvaccinated pregnant women had a very low birthweight baby. The proportion of women with premature births was 6.51% (95%CI 6.21 to 6.82) in vaccinated women and 5.99% (95%CI 5.91 to 6.08) in unvaccinated women. The proportion of women with very premature births was 1.71% (95%CI 1.55 to 1.88) in vaccinated and 1.74% (95%CI 1.70 to 1.79) in unvaccinated women. The proportion of women with extremely premature births was 1.09% (95%CI 0.97 to 1.23) in vaccinated women and 1.21% (95%CI 1.17 to 1.25) in unvaccinated women.
Source p29
Premature Births
Although, there is one difference between the vaccinated & unvaccinated - premature births.
Figure 3 Premature births in vaccinated & unvaccinated females.
Fig. 3 shows a significant increase in premature births in the vaccinated group.
The difference in premature births between the vaccinated & unvaccinated groups appears significant but is dismissed in the UK report.
[T]his could be explained by differences in their age and underlying health risk
Or it could be something else causing it… the vaccine?
And so based on the Glasgow Royal Fertility Clinic’s criteria, looking at the above data, maybe they should be banning vaccinated women from fertility services?
Of course I, and I’m sure you, wouldn’t support that…
because we’re reasonable people…..we’re not Eugenicists.