6 ms·

Pfizer's primary mRNA injections “temporarily” impair semen concentration

51 points by Anonymous4272 4y ago

throw457 4y ago
nonane 4y ago
“Systemic immune response after BNT162b2 vaccine is a reasonable cause for transient semen concentration and TMC decline. Long-term prognosis remains good.”
- Alex3917 4y ago
  This. Any source of systemic inflammation does this. It would be no different if you had a cold or an autoimmune disorder.
- api 4y ago
  Wouldn't this mean that other vaccines as well as colds, the flu, and COVID would all be likely to do this?
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    Yes but it’s not as effective of a headline if you’re trying to drum up outrage from the double digit IQ club.
    - api 4y ago
      Everything is about clicks.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Yep. People also forget that Guillain-Barre syndrome is more common after ordinary infections than vaccinations.
  - elkos 4y ago
    In many cases much more permanently
JoshTko 4y ago
Would have been helpful to compare against flu vaccine
zamalek 4y ago
Could this be exploited, and could we finally land on a male contraceptive?
jasonhansel 4y ago
Why the scare quotes around "temporarily" in the HN title? The study shows that the change was transient, and its title does not include quotation marks. Putting scare quotes around the word "temporarily" is both unjustified and misleading.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bediger4000 4y ago
  Because the point of posting these articles is to keep an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust around science and COVID vaccine in particular. Scare quoting temporarily plats into a particular irrational belief that COVID vaccination (maybe all vaccination) renders American men sterile.
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    Were you aware of this effect before reading about it here? I wasn't. Could that have maybe been a reason for posting it?
    - bediger4000 4y ago
      The addition of scare quotes makes me say "no, that's not a good reason". If it were just science news, it wouldn't have them. This particular post is just to promote suspicion about science and COVID vaccine.
      - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        That's an interesting hypothesis, but the linked article is not science news, it's an academic paper. The title shown here is unfortunately editorialized, but the actual paper's title is "Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors". I attempted to submit the link with its actual title, but unfortunately it just sent me to this thread. Aside from the title, this submission doesn't seem flagworthy to me.
Tepix 4y ago
> T3 evaluation demonstrated overall recovery. Thus, the editorialized scare quotes seem to be misplaced. The op did the same thing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30306904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30306904
- yucky 4y ago
  If this were as thoroughly studied as we were led to believe, then we would already have known about this effect. And yet we're just not learning about it, which leads us to wonder...what else are we yet to learn about it? At least that's my read on the use of the "scare quotes".
- IdEntities 4y ago
  If you dig into the actual data cited in the paper, the assertion that recovery was demonstrated at T3 is dodgy at best. The study authors may have put some reassuring language in their commentary to get past political roadblocks to publication. I would not have added the quotes myself, but they're not necessarily misplaced. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/pfizer-vaccine-effects-on-total-motile https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/pfizer-vaccine-effects-on...
dom96 4y ago
My initial reaction to this title was "Oh awesome, Pfizer used mRNA tech to create a male contraceptive". But this is actually about the vaccine causing this. Still, maybe we could use this to make an actual contraceptive?
shadowgovt 4y ago
The scare quotes in the headline are not reflected in the article and seem not in line with community standards.
tokinonagare 4y ago
One more hypothesis (also called conspiracy theory in non academic venues) that turned out to be true.
zeroth32 4y ago
There was a conspiracy theory about this. It was suppressed as a nonsense and miss information. I really find it very difficult to trust official authorities any more.
- WalterGR 4y ago
  Was there any evidence at that time to support the conspiracy theory?
  - MuchoMaas 4y ago
    Yes, there was. There were early studies in rats showing that the lipid nanoparticles which the mRNA vaccines use concentrate in the ovaries and testes. There should have been biodistribution studies in humans before the vaccine rollout, but naturally those were skipped entirely. It was one of the biggest early red flags for me.
logicchains 4y ago
Could somebody please help me understand table 2 on page 14? For the Sperm Concentration row, the value is -14.5% relative to reference on T1, -15.4% relative to reference on T2, and -15.9% relative to reference on T3. Where T3 represents the evaluation over 150 days after vaccination date. Is there a typo here; shouldn't T3 be closer to zero? Or was there a later assessment date that wasn't included in the table?
ifyoubuildit 4y ago
I expect a lot of salty comments in this thread, and a lot of downplaying (which is probably justified, it _does_ say that the effect goes away, and it may be that this happens after other vaccinations). However, this is a thing that none of the many people who previously got this shot would have been offically warned about beforehand, right? This is presumably one of the reasons why a lot of people were skeptical that giving something to a billion people and then waiting a few months was perfectly sufficient to make claims about long term safety.
- timeon 4y ago
  Interesting how you are trying to create issue from something you have acknowledged [1] is not issue. [1] > it _does_ say that the effect goes away
  - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
    The issue is not the effect on sperm, because as both you and I have pointed out, the paper says the effect subsides. The issue is that when being advised (or browbeaten) to get this shot, you probably weren't informed beforehand that for the next 3 months your swimmers might not be in tip top shape. This might not matter to you or me, but maybe it would to couples that are trying to concieve, for instance. Does that make sense?
    - IdEntities 4y ago
      It's not just that people weren't warned, it's that we were presented with a bunch of a priori reasoning about why mRNA shots couldn't possibly have this effect. So it raises the question, which of the other assertions (which were not backed by long term clinical data, because none existed) were also wrong?
rob_c 4y ago
Was this really essential to research now. The conspiracy nutters are going to eat this right up.

51 points by Anonymous4272 4y ago

“Systemic immune response after BNT162b2 vaccine is a reasonable cause for transient semen concentration and TMC decline. Long-term prognosis remains good.”

Alex3917 4y ago
This. Any source of systemic inflammation does this. It would be no different if you had a cold or an autoimmune disorder.
api 4y ago
Wouldn't this mean that other vaccines as well as colds, the flu, and COVID would all be likely to do this?
- jliptzin 4y ago
  Yes but it’s not as effective of a headline if you’re trying to drum up outrage from the double digit IQ club.
  - api 4y ago
    Everything is about clicks.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  Yep. People also forget that Guillain-Barre syndrome is more common after ordinary infections than vaccinations.
- elkos 4y ago
  In many cases much more permanently

JoshTko 4y ago

Would have been helpful to compare against flu vaccine

zamalek 4y ago

Could this be exploited, and could we finally land on a male contraceptive?

jasonhansel 4y ago

Why the scare quotes around "temporarily" in the HN title? The study shows that the change was transient, and its title does not include quotation marks. Putting scare quotes around the word "temporarily" is both unjustified and misleading.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bediger4000 4y ago
Because the point of posting these articles is to keep an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust around science and COVID vaccine in particular. Scare quoting temporarily plats into a particular irrational belief that COVID vaccination (maybe all vaccination) renders American men sterile.
- ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  Were you aware of this effect before reading about it here? I wasn't. Could that have maybe been a reason for posting it?
  - bediger4000 4y ago
    The addition of scare quotes makes me say "no, that's not a good reason". If it were just science news, it wouldn't have them. This particular post is just to promote suspicion about science and COVID vaccine.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      That's an interesting hypothesis, but the linked article is not science news, it's an academic paper. The title shown here is unfortunately editorialized, but the actual paper's title is "Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors". I attempted to submit the link with its actual title, but unfortunately it just sent me to this thread. Aside from the title, this submission doesn't seem flagworthy to me.

Tepix 4y ago

> T3 evaluation demonstrated overall recovery. Thus, the editorialized scare quotes seem to be misplaced. The op did the same thing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30306904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30306904

yucky 4y ago
If this were as thoroughly studied as we were led to believe, then we would already have known about this effect. And yet we're just not learning about it, which leads us to wonder...what else are we yet to learn about it? At least that's my read on the use of the "scare quotes".
IdEntities 4y ago
If you dig into the actual data cited in the paper, the assertion that recovery was demonstrated at T3 is dodgy at best. The study authors may have put some reassuring language in their commentary to get past political roadblocks to publication. I would not have added the quotes myself, but they're not necessarily misplaced. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/pfizer-vaccine-effects-on-total-motile https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/pfizer-vaccine-effects-on...

dom96 4y ago

My initial reaction to this title was "Oh awesome, Pfizer used mRNA tech to create a male contraceptive". But this is actually about the vaccine causing this. Still, maybe we could use this to make an actual contraceptive?

shadowgovt 4y ago

The scare quotes in the headline are not reflected in the article and seem not in line with community standards.

tokinonagare 4y ago

One more hypothesis (also called conspiracy theory in non academic venues) that turned out to be true.

zeroth32 4y ago

There was a conspiracy theory about this. It was suppressed as a nonsense and miss information. I really find it very difficult to trust official authorities any more.

WalterGR 4y ago
Was there any evidence at that time to support the conspiracy theory?
- MuchoMaas 4y ago
  Yes, there was. There were early studies in rats showing that the lipid nanoparticles which the mRNA vaccines use concentrate in the ovaries and testes. There should have been biodistribution studies in humans before the vaccine rollout, but naturally those were skipped entirely. It was one of the biggest early red flags for me.

logicchains 4y ago

Could somebody please help me understand table 2 on page 14? For the Sperm Concentration row, the value is -14.5% relative to reference on T1, -15.4% relative to reference on T2, and -15.9% relative to reference on T3. Where T3 represents the evaluation over 150 days after vaccination date. Is there a typo here; shouldn't T3 be closer to zero? Or was there a later assessment date that wasn't included in the table?

ifyoubuildit 4y ago

I expect a lot of salty comments in this thread, and a lot of downplaying (which is probably justified, it _does_ say that the effect goes away, and it may be that this happens after other vaccinations). However, this is a thing that none of the many people who previously got this shot would have been offically warned about beforehand, right? This is presumably one of the reasons why a lot of people were skeptical that giving something to a billion people and then waiting a few months was perfectly sufficient to make claims about long term safety.

timeon 4y ago
Interesting how you are trying to create issue from something you have acknowledged [1] is not issue. [1] > it _does_ say that the effect goes away
- ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  The issue is not the effect on sperm, because as both you and I have pointed out, the paper says the effect subsides. The issue is that when being advised (or browbeaten) to get this shot, you probably weren't informed beforehand that for the next 3 months your swimmers might not be in tip top shape. This might not matter to you or me, but maybe it would to couples that are trying to concieve, for instance. Does that make sense?
  - IdEntities 4y ago
    It's not just that people weren't warned, it's that we were presented with a bunch of a priori reasoning about why mRNA shots couldn't possibly have this effect. So it raises the question, which of the other assertions (which were not backed by long term clinical data, because none existed) were also wrong?

rob_c 4y ago

Was this really essential to research now. The conspiracy nutters are going to eat this right up.