Thank you so much for that, Hillary! This is very helpful and I’ll pass the link on to her as well!
This article included much more information that is reassuring rather than just the “haven’t seen it yet” tone some others were hearing.
-Merv
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I googled this morning and it looks like a bunch of outlets took to debunking it as of yesterday!
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What were they supposed to say, “we’ve proven this never happens”? You can’t prove negatives. Plus, causes of infertility are often very complex and it’s hard to establish causation. People argue that long term use of birth control pills causes infertility, because they note that women who have been on it until they are 35 sometimes have trouble getting pregnant. But you know what else is linked to fertility issues? Aging.
They have been saying that getting coronavirus can cause performance issues in men. So maybe the anti-vax crowd did some of their famous logical leaps and arrived at “therefore the vaccine for coronavirus might cause infertility in women.”
Here’s a USA Today article with the same info as the AP article plus some on the effects of coronavirus on the placenta of pregnant women.
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Well - in fairness to Pfizer - they did provide a more in-depth response; I just didn’t find it in the first (as it turns out: insufficient) news source I had looked at. They made it sound like Pfizer’s only response to that was essentially “no comment”. Which turned out to be not true as the articles given by Hillary show. The comments in there are a long ways from “no comment” and provide much more reassurance. Sure - nobody absolutely proves a negative and in fact we all know there isn’t ever any certainty that a vaccine won’t in fact kill you, and so could your next meal or the fact that you got out of bed this morning. But there is a wide world of good reassurances in between a cryptic and decidedly non-reassuring “we can’t and won’t guarantee you anything” response, all the way to a “here are the reasons it is implausible that this could ever happen [will happen to you]” response. I’m glad to see compelling reassurances that this worry, like most from these sorts of sources, is unfounded.
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If you’re on Instagram, @virus.vs.labcoat (a virologist in Australia) did a really good story debunking it. She first went to the original post made by someone on a virology forum suggesting this hypothesis (anyone can post there). Then she did a BLAST search. Then she used another tool (I can’t remember which one) that analyzes individual proteins, and she compared the spike protein with the syncytin-1 protein. She also compared the spike protein with collagen. If that little similarity would cause problems (and it’s the baby that makes the placenta, not mom), a Covid infection would kill just about everybody.
Also, while Pfizer specifically said not to get pregnant during the trial, and they tested us for pregnancy prior to getting the shot each time, 23 pregnancies happened anyway. 12 in the vaccine arm and 11 in the placebo arm. 2 miscarriages in the placebo arm so far. So clearly the vaccine didn’t interfere with placenta formation in those 12 women. 
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Other concerns I’ve encountered …
Can anybody address the validity of these two related concerns about the COVID vaccines?
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RNA vaccines are novel (untested for long-term consequences) and …
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…regarding any of those possible long-term effects - could it trigger autoimmune response?
They’ve been in testing for at least a decade via SARS and MERS vaccines, plus some others. The technology itself has been in the works for decades. They had recently worked out some of the kinks to get the mRNA to be stable long enough to get into the cells. Without that, they didn’t provide as much protection.
Most vaccine reactions occur shortly after getting the vaccine. We have data going back to phase 1 trials in March/April, and all the Phase 3 participants hit at least the 2 month mark. Looking at how these vaccines work, the mRNA and the spike proteins created by it are gone within a few days. There are no adjuvants (not that adjuvants are unsafe, but they’re what many anti-vax people are worried about). What kind of long term problem would there be and by what mechanism?
If you’re talking about ADE, found in Dengue Fever, that’s not been seen in Covid-19.
Between the two mRNA vaccine trials, about 40,000 people were vaccinated. No autoimmune issues created. Now they didn’t have people with existing autoimmune diseases in the trials, but I think it’s usually live virus vaccines that are a problem for that group? This vaccine doesn’t contain the virus. People with autoimmune diseases or any other medical condition should consult their doctor, of course.
Another thing to point out is the risk level of a person with autoimmune disease having severe Covid-19 disease itself. I mean, it just makes no sense whatsoever to be afraid of x occurring with the vaccine when it hasn’t shown up in the tens of thousands of doses given, while the disease itself is known to cause severe problems or death in people with autoimmune disease. So hypothetical risk based on zero evidence vs known risk demonstrated in the last year? That seems like an easy choice to me.
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An older post, but thought I would chime in. I am not an expert in virology, but I work in the lab for one of those experts (adenovirus, in this case). I have also received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, so I have some skin in the game.
As mentioned, initial work on RNA vaccines have been progressing for a while now. They have even worked out RNA nucleotide analogs that reduce immune responses to the introduced RNA molecules. Here is the important part . . .
If you are infected with SARS-CoV-2 you will have mRNA from the virus in your cells.
SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus. It floats around in protein coated lipid droplets that hold RNA which is then injected into your cells when the viral particle binds to your cells. The vaccine somewhat mimics this process. The difference is the vaccine has mRNA for just a single protein, and the vaccine isn’t capable of replicating more RNA in your cell. The vaccine goes into the cell, gets translated, and then disappears. The virus replicates thousands and thousands of times, greatly increasing the amount of viral mRNA in your cells for days or weeks at a time.
If you don’t get the vaccine then there is a very high probability that you will get the infection at some point, especially if you live in the US. If there are any long term consequences from the vaccine then the survivors of those infections will face the very same long term consequences. Survivors of infections will also face the consequences from having the mRNA from the rest of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, of which there are many. Survivors will also have had much, much higher doses of that very same mRNA.
No vaccine is 100% safe. What we look at is the relative risk, and in this case the vaccine is multiple orders of magnitude safer than the alternative.
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Question for Michelle: when vaccine inserts mention they contain, say MRC-5 human diploid cells, DNA and protein, is that simply a safeguard against cases where there is improper removal or washing away of growth media? There’s no use for these cells or proteins in the vaccine product, and I was under the impression that they are removed, but yet you can find it listed in inserts. Any answers? @MOls
Not sure Michelle is following this closely as it has been inactive a while, so I will comment that that is probably the case, although the product insert of the one varicella vaccine ( which is grown in human diploid cells) does not mention it contains cells or human DNA. Sort of like your milk shake has a notice that it was produced close to a peanut. It obviously has viral DNA since the varicella virus is a DNA virus and it is a live attenuated vaccine. Others may vary as I didn’t look far. Copied from Varilrix insert:
PHARMACEUTICAL PARTICULARS
List of Excipients
Excipients of the vaccine are: amino acids, human albumin, lactose, mannitol, sorbitol.
Solvent is water for injections.
Neomycin sulphate is present as a residual from the manufacturing process.
By the way, welcome to the forum.
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Thanks Phil, that’s what thought too. Ingredients seems to be a sticking point among some anti-vaccine sources, and it’s sometimes frustrating when technical sources don’t supply the answer that’s obvious to scientists and/or health experts, but not so obvious to skeptics
Also, this is the table source I got the question from
Not on him.
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I would agree with that. 
Should her organs be used on someone else?
That depends on her beliefs and living will, if she has one.
This is a great observation.
On a similar score, I wonder how many patriotic Americans watching the Appollo 11 Moon Landing knew that the technology that took the crew to the moon was developed on the back of Nazi rocket science? Should the American government moth ball NASA as a result? And what of the other advances that have resulted from NASA research are they also tainted by the death’s Wernher von Braun’s V2 Rockets caused before his defection to the West?
Any who think that this is an exception would do well check the history books. Many emerging areas of technology and medicine jumped forward after the war as a result of Nazi scientists being granted immunity in the USSR, UK, USA, etc. in return for their expertise and research. Many advances in areas such as organ transplantation, effective hypothermia treatments, and cervical cancer screening came as a result of Nazi research and/or human experimentation. If I accept a kidney transplant or my wife goes for a pap test, are we participating in/benefitting from an egregious historic evil?
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Von Braun is one of the reasons my hometown is so well off. My brother who is a professor specializing in German Jewish history just cringes when going through the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. But this area has boomed because of that work.
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