Horowitz: Are pregnant women given enough informed consent in the risk-benefit analysis of the vaccine vs. the virus?

Some "medical experts" seem to think men can give birth, but during this pandemic, we should be thankful that it's women who carry babies, because they appear to be at a much lower risk than men for severe disease from SARS-CoV-2. A new study comparing mortality rates among pregnant vs. non-pregnant COVID hospital patients demonstrates that the ubiquitous talking point about pregnant women being so much more at risk appears not to be grounded in reality.

A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center seemed to find that pregnant women hospitalized for a COVID diagnosis actually fared slightly better than non-pregnant women in the same age cohort (women under 45).

"In-hospital death occurred in 0.8% (n = 9) of pregnant patients and 3.5% (n = 340) of nonpregnant patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and viral pneumonia," the authors found in this surprising result. "Median time from admission to death was 18 days (interquartile range, 6 to 28 days) for pregnant patients and 12 days (interquartile range, 5 to 23 days) for nonpregnant patients."

In a first-of-its-kind study, the analysts did a retrospective cohort study of patients in the Premier Healthcare Database, an all-payer data repository that captures 20% of U.S. hospitalizations. While the study does not give any indication of whether pregnant women are more likely to be hospitalized in the first place, it does seem to show that there is certainly no greater risk of death among those who are pregnant once hospitalized.

To begin with, young women are the lowest-risk group for COVID, being much less at risk than even young men. However, pregnant women have been terrorized by the entire medical community into getting the experimental shots because they are being told ubiquitously that pregnancy is akin to a severe condition like old age, obesity, and diabetes. It's clear from this study of a large sample size that while we can't rule out pregnancy as more likely to lead to hospitalization (or not), if it truly were like a comorbidity, one would expect an unmistakably higher death rate among that cohort as compared to non-pregnant women of the same age.

In fact, among just 9 pregnant patients who died of COVID found in the Premier Healthcare Database through November 2020, not surprisingly, six were obese and seven had at least one comorbid condition. Also, eight of them were non-white, which follows the pattern of the general non-pregnant universe, which is that most of the deaths are among the obese and those with comorbities, with a somewhat higher risk among non-whites. If pregnancy is an elevated risk, it is certainly not detected in this study.

A similar cohort study by the University of Oxford that looked at all symptomatic hospitalized patients with COVID-19 ages 20 to 39 hospitalized throughout the United Kingdom reported mortality of 0.8% in pregnant and 3.1% in non-pregnant women.

Even in the CDC's survey, which shows the opposite, the numbers are unremarkable. Unlike the aforementioned two studies, the CDC covered overall mortality for both hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID-infected women and found a mortality rate of 0.15% among pregnant and 0.12% among non-pregnant patients. However, as noted by authors of this new study, the CDC's survey was not a full study group but from a voluntary reporting registry set up by the CDC, where the pregnancy status was only available for 36% of the registrants.

The reason this finding is so important is that the ironclad premise that pregnant women are so much more at risk from the virus has led the medical community to shame nearly every pregnant woman into getting the experimental shots. The medical establishment has violated the long-standing principle of not giving pregnant women anything that has not undergone rigorous safety trials specifically designed for pregnant women, which is why there are few drugs of any sort on the market recommended for them.

In a line that should shock the conscience of every American, Pfizer scientists write in the six-month update on the safety and efficacy of their vaccine that safety trials for pregnant women are still ongoing. "This report does not address VE and safety in pregnant women and in children younger than 12 years. Studies evaluating BNT162b2 in these populations are ongoing," write the authors in the pre-print posted on July 28.

Notice how they place pregnant women in the same category as kids under 12 for not having a complete safety profile. Well, when it comes to kids under 12, we all know that the shot is not even available for voluntary use, which makes sense. But for pregnant women, not only is it available and forced upon them by practically every OB/GYN, any of them living under a mandate from a public or private entity are forced to take the shot! How is this OK?

Likewise, it wasn't until July that Moderna even announced it was conducting a safety trial on pregnant women. At the time, my wife turned to me and said, "When do we ever approve, much less de facto mandate (for some) a medical intervention on pregnant women before the safety studies are complete?"

As of Aug. 13, there were 1,175 reports of miscarriages reported to VAERS. However, we know that the reporting is only capturing a fraction of the likely adverse events, especially for something like a miscarriage, which is not nearly as clear-cut as an anaphylactic reaction or myocarditis. Given the cumbersome nature of filing a VAERS entry and the penalty for falsifying it, doctors are going to be very reluctant to lodge a miscarriage filing.

Shockingly, in its letter of approval to BioNTech on Monday (p.6), the FDA openly conceded that the VAERS surveillance is insufficient even for more definitive adverse events like myocarditis. "We have determined that an analysis of spontaneous postmarketing adverse events reported under section 505(k)(1) of the FDCA will not be sufficient to assess known serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis and identify an unexpected serious risk of subclinical myocarditis," writes the FDA in a shocking revelation that flies in the face of its approval. "Furthermore, the pharmacovigilance system that FDA is required to maintain under section 505(k)(3) of the FDCA is not sufficient to assess these serious risks."

Again, if that's the case for serious reactions like myocarditis, how much more is the surveillance system insufficient in capturing the more ambiguous fertility and pregnancy issues. Even the media has widely reported on the menstrual irregularities that many women throughout the world have been complaining about following the shots. The notion that women have enough data and information on this to make an informed decision at this point is simply unfounded.

Until now, those pushing government mandates even on pregnant women have hidden behind the "fact" that pregnant women will all die from the virus, so it gives the medical establishment and the government the right to break all norms and safety protocols by de facto mandating the vaccine. But does the data really bear that out, at least for young women without obesity or serious underlying conditions?

Moreover, as with other groups of people, there is a third choice between facing the virus with nothing and risking a high miscarriage rate with the shots. There is multi-drug early treatment for the virus that has proven effective. In the irony of all ironies, hydroxychloroquine, for example, is one of the few drugs on the market that actually has controlled trials vouching for its safety in pregnant women (primarily because of use for lupus and malaria), yet the medical establishment treats this drug, which has been prescribed more often than even morphine, as some experimental poison, while the shots still undergoing trials are a de facto mandate in some places!