No, Study Did Not Show 82% Miscarriage for Women with COVID Shot in Early Pregnancy

It Was Based on Misinterpretation of Data.

by Maggie Zhou, PhD (genetics)

As much as I believe that the COVID “vaccines” are a grave danger to anyone, in the longer run anyway, the claim that’s been circulating about a study that supposedly showed an 82% miscarriage rate among women who took the COVID jab in their early pregnancy, is false.

The original article that put out this claim was immediately withdrawn a day later (for good reason), but I saw that the Stew Peters show latched on to this alarming but false claim and wouldn’t let go (as usual, each of their episodes has some misinfo/disinfo, mixed with truths, so I consider this show unreliable).

The claim arose from a misinterpretation by a doctor who read a study in the New England Journal of Medicine dated Apr 21, 2021, specifically of the data in Table 4.

The study surveyed 3958 pregnant women who received one of the two mRNA vaccines from December 14, 2020, to February 28, 2021.  More women were in their 1st, and 2nd trimesters, than in their 3rd, when they received their first dose (Table 3).

The critical thing this doctor failed to grasp, is that this study only reported pregnancy loss data from the same 11 weeks period (Dec 14 – Feb 28), and only reporting on those women who had a “completed pregnancy” by Feb 28, i.e., resulting in a live-birth, stillbirth, or a spontaneous, or induced abortion.  Those whose pregnancy continued beyond Feb 28 were NOT included in their calculations of pregnancy loss rate.

Among 827 participants who had a completed pregnancy, the pregnancy resulted in a live birth in 712 women (700 of these received the 1^st dose in their third trimester), in a spontaneous abortion in 104, in stillbirth in 1, and in other outcomes (induced abortion and ectopic pregnancy) in 10.

This doctor mistakenly thought, that this means that 104 of the up to 127 pregnancies (827-700) in which the women received their first dose in the 1^st or 2^nd trimester, resulted in a spontaneous abortion (defined as spontaneous loss before 20 weeks of gestation), and therefore the spontaneous abortion rate is 104/127 = 82%!

But that’s wrong, because there were 3958-827=3131 participants whose pregnancies were still ongoing on Feb 28, most of these received their first dose in the 1^st or 2^nd trimester.  In other words, most women didn’t have a spontaneous abortion (yet), it’s only the ones who completed their pregnancy one way or another that got counted by the cut-off date.

Obviously, this study is incomplete (it’s titled “preliminary findings” for a reason).  Final calculations could only be made after following all the participants to the completion of their pregnancies.  Those who were vaccinated early in their pregnancies need to be particularly monitored due to known vulnerability of fetal development to any assault in the early stages.

The authors’ justification is that they wanted to provide an early safety check to catch any gross signals should they arise.  Based on their data, all 700 of the participants who received their first dose during the 3^rd trimester, and had a completed pregnancy by Feb 28, did have a live-birth.

The important thing is that they need to continue the study, and report again what happened to the other 3133 pregnancies.  Such data should become available in Sep, 2021, and they should publish shortly after.  If they don’t, there must be a VERY BIG RED FLAG!

Maggie Zhou received her PhD in genetics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1997, and worked as a computational biologist for a number of years.  She is currently an independent seeker of truth.