‘Vaccine shedding’ is the new disinformation being circulated among anti-vaxxers.
When a school in Florida, US announced that it wouldn’t allow vaccinated teachers in its classrooms, its founder said “vaccine shedding” was her main concern.
Paediatrician Nicole Baldwin, MD, said the anti-vaxx community is buzzing with this latest bit of disinformation.
“It’s amazing, and sad, what people will believe,” Dr Baldwin told MedPage Today.
This piece of disinformation follows that vaccinated people can somehow shed the spike protein, supposedly causing menstrual cycle irregularities, miscarriages, and sterility in women, merely by being in proximity.
“This is a new low, from the delusional wing of the anti-vaxx cult,” said Zubin Damania, MD, aka ZDoggMD, in a video he recently posted to bust vaccine shedding myths.
Damania explained that the misinformation arises from a previous claim that syncytin, a protein involved in placental formation, has some structural similarity SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and so vaccination would interfere with women’s reproductive systems. Numerous fact checks have shown that vaccines don’t target the protein.
On injection, mRNA and viral vector vaccines prompt cells to make the spike protein, but it’s usually cleared in 24 to 48 hours, leaving little opportunity for “shedding,” even if it was possible, which it isn’t, underscored Dr Damania.
He pointed out another logical fallacy: “Why, then, wouldn’t natural spike protein do the same thing? Wouldn’t you be more scared of natural coronavirus infection? Oh, but it’s ‘natural.'”
There are legitimate questions about and research on whether the coronavirus itself and vaccines affect women’s menstrual cycles, he added. Since the beginning of the pandemic, women who’ve had COVID reported changes to their menstrual cycle, and Dr Damania said that researchers are examining reports of menstrual cycle changes after vaccination.
Regarding the potential relationship to vaccination, “we don’t understand, first, if it’s true, and if it were true, what is the mechanism?” he said. “Anything that causes stress, inflammation, and an immune response may have an effect on the menstrual cycle. […] Could it be that the vaccine causes a temporary change in menses? Sure, it’s possible, and it’s being looked at.”
Source: MedPage Today
