The CDC released the first comprehensive study of the side effects experienced by patients receiving the new COVID vaccines in the United States this week. While these trends were recorded during the initial approval trials, that was a comparatively tiny number of people. This study recorded the effects felt by nearly 14 million people. While none of the vaccines are producing major medical issues and are still considered to be safe, many patients have reported some negative effects in the hours and days after being jabbed. But the most curious figure revealed in the study is that women seem to experience negative side effects significantly more often than men. (CBS San Francisco)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a study that examined that first 13.7-million people to receive the vaccine and found that women experienced worse side effects than men.
Of the patients who reported side effects like fatigue, injection site soreness, fever or chills to the agency, 79.1% were women, even though women made up on 61.2% of people getting vaccinated…
The CDC study does not pinpoint exactly when women experience more intense side effects than men. But the findings overall are consistent with research into other vaccines.
The full report on the study is available from the CDC here. The study was conducted between December 14, 2020 and January 13, 2021. Only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were studied, as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had not cleared its emergency authorization trials at that point.
The good news is that 90.8% of the side effects experienced by patients were classified as “nonserious” while only 9.2% were described as serious. The two most common side effects were headaches and fatigue, while a slightly smaller percentage of patients reported experiencing dizziness. 113 deaths following vaccination were recorded, with the vast majority of them occurring among nursing home residents. The vaccines were not believed to be responsible for the deaths in any cases.
Getting back to the gender gap, 61.2% of the vaccines were administered to women, but female patients made up 78.7% of the reports of adverse side effects. That seems statistically significant, doesn’t it? Since I’m not a doctor, I couldn’t begin to even guess what could be different between male and female patients that would cause one gender to suffer worse results than the other. But speaking strictly as an armchair quarterback and a layman, I did find myself wondering if the numbers of patients experiencing side effects were actually roughly equal across both genders, but some of the men in the study were just too stubborn to admit that they weren’t feeling well. (My wife, who is also not a doctor, shot down that suggestion immediately, saying that men are by far the bigger “whiners” when they fall ill.)
Another interesting data point revealed in the study is that the majority of reports of side effects were recorded after the second shot, showing up nearly twice as often as reports following the first shot. This fits in with anecdotal evidence I’ve been hearing online and from a number of published media reports. And according to medical authorities, this phenomenon was not only predicted, but it’s actually a positive sign, indicating that your immune system has triggered a response.
These common symptoms are typically signs that the vaccine has triggered a response by your immune system.
And that’s what it is supposed to do.
“When you feel sick or have a fever, that’s largely your body responding,” Dr. Debra Powell, the chief of infectious diseases at Tower Health in Pennsylvania, told Healthline. “It’s usually a very short-term thing and much better than getting COVID and being sick for 2 weeks or in the hospital.”
You can read through the entire report yourself, but it does seem that the overall news remains good. Serious side effects have been minimal and generally involve other, underlying medical conditions. Now let’s get those numbers up to the point where the government will be forced to cancel all of the mask mandates and the rest of this garbage. Personally, I’m planning on burning all of my masks in the campfire at our family’s Fourth of July celebration.
