Numerous studies have shown that Covid-19 vaccines are safe during pregnancy, but Republican senators have recently stirred up false and misleading claims that are now spreading on social media.
On Monday, Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky released a batch of text messages retrieved from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former government phone as part of an investigation into the former health official’s leadership and actions during the Covid-19 pandemic – including messages in which he discusses the possible risks and safety of the vaccine during pregnancy.
These messages were a launching pad for the spread of inaccurate data, particularly claims about an 82% risk of miscarriage associated with Covid-19 vaccines. The incorrect figure spread online, including in a since-deleted post by Sen. Ted Cruz.
“This is a well-studied area. We knew this in 2021, that there wasn’t an increased risk, and now we have five more years of data. So it’s hard to believe we would miss a factor of eight increase in miscarriages,” Dr. Kevin Ault, an ob/gyn and president-elect of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.
In a news release, Johnson references an exchange Fauci had in January 2021, in which he said that a second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester,” as well as a criticism of a study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April 2021.
In that...
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