Menstruation and coronavirus: doctors dismiss claims vaccinated strangers can affect women’s periods

CoronaCheck is RMIT ABC Fact Check’s weekly email newsletter dedicated to fighting the misinformation infodemic surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.

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CoronaCheck #63

In this week’s CoronaCheck, we debunk claims, shared online and seemingly based on anecdotes alone, that COVID-19 vaccines can cause changes to women’s menstruation.

We also look at which states are pulling their weight when it comes to taking incoming international travellers, and bring you the latest on misinformation spreading in India.

Can vaccines affect women’s periods?

Posts circulating on social media have claimed COVID-19 vaccines adversely affect women’s periods.

The suggestions, which have been shared by self-described “wellness” enthusiasts in the US, have drawn comments from others claiming menstrual abnormalities are being experienced by thousands of women as a consequence of the vaccine rollout.

Some claims went even further, suggesting that some women were experiencing changes to their periods, or even severe illness, simply by being in close contact with people who had been vaccinated.

But the claims have been dismissed by experts.

In an opinion piece published by the New York Times, reproductive immunologist Alice Lu-Culligan and medical writer in residence Randi Hutter Epstein, from Yale University’s School of Medicine, reported there was no data pointing to a link between vaccines and changes in women’s menstruation.

“Changes to their normal cycle can seem especially worrying in the wake of false rumours about the shots causing infertility, as well as news of rare blood clots,” they wrote.

University of Sydney associate professor Nick Wood, meanwhile, told CoronaCheck he was sceptical of anecdotes spreading via social media because individual experiences could be shaped by stress, anxiety and other factors.

Dr Wood, who is an expert in immunisation, said he was unsure of the science behind “unusual bleeding” and whether there was any connection to COVID-19 vaccines.

However, he said claims of an adverse impact being experienced by women simply because they were near vaccinated people were “a bit nonsensical”.

This was not “biologically plausible”, he said, as there was no “transmissible effect” in any of the vaccines.

Fact Checkers at Politifact similarly found this claim to be false, stating there were no elements of the vaccine that could be passed to another person by proxy.

“There is no mechanism by which unvaccinated individuals can contract any sort of side effects from people who are vaccinated,” the fact checkers said, “and there is no evidence showing a link between menstrual irregularities, fertility and the vaccines.”

The claims come amid rising vaccine hesitancy in Australia and the cancellation of some vaccine appointments.

Has WA been taking the most international arrivals?

As Western Australians endured a three-day lockdown following the latest COVID-19 leak from hotel quarantine, Premier Mark McGowan noted that the state had been taking in “around 1,025” returning travellers each week.

“That’s a lot — for a state our size — that’s a lot,” Mr McGowan told a news conference. “That’s the most per capita of any state in Australia.”

Fact Check crunched the numbers and found that Mr McGowan was correct, at least at the time he made his claim.

Up until last weekend’s Perth shutdown WA’s cap was indeed 1,025 returnees per week, according to a media release issued by the federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.

On a per-capita basis, that’s 38 returned travellers per 100,000 people in the state.

WA’s amended cap of 512 weekly arrivals, which came into effect this week, equates to 19 returnees per 100,000 people.

New South Wales, which has the highest weekly cap (3010), has been taking 37 arrivals per 100,000 people each week.

South Australia’s weekly intake has amounted to 30 per 100,000. Victoria (13 per 100,000 people) and Queensland (10 per 100,000 people) rank next. Both these states, however, have a surge capacity of an extra 120 and 150 returnees respectively, which would mean per capita weekly arrivals of 15 and 13 per 100,000.

A Department spokesman said in an email that “arrangements for the Northern Territory and Tasmania are settled on a case-by-case basis between the Commonwealth and those jurisdictions”.

A spokeswoman for the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet told Fact Check that the state’s only international flights were those coming from New Zealand.

“Given this, Tasmania is not part of the international cap system that relates to other States,” the spokeswoman said.

And while Mr McGowan referred only to states when making his claim, Fact Check notes that according to NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner, the Northern Territory was taking 425 international arrivals per week in January — by far the highest number in terms of per capita arrivals (172 per 100,000).

Media reports, meanwhile, suggest the ACT is not taking any international arrivals.

Craig Kelly removed from Facebook

Outspoken federal MP Craig Kelly has had his Facebook account removed by the platform for repeatedly violating the site’s policies.

“We don’t allow anyone, including elected officials, to share misinformation about COVID-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm or [about] COVID-19 vaccines that [has] been debunked by public health experts,” a Facebook spokesperson told the ABC.

“We have clear policies against this type of content and have removed Mr Kelly’s Facebook Page for repeated violations of this policy.”

RMIT ABC Fact Check has taken aim at many of the false and misleading claims posted to Facebook by Mr Kelly during the pandemic.

This includes his repeated touting of unproven treatments, suggestions that Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews could be “jailed” for his stance on hydroxychloroquine and the sharing of dodgy studies on mask efficacy.

From India

With India recording more than 300,000 new coronavirus cases a day — accounting for more than half of the new global surge — fact checkers there have worked tirelessly to tackle an onslaught of misinformation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been among those spreading such misinformation, using his monthly address to the nation to share a debunked video claiming that nebulisers can be used as an alternative to oxygen in the treatment of COVID-19.

According to fact checkers at Boom Live, experts had deemed the claims made in the video, which shows a doctor demonstrating how a nebuliser could be used in place of an oxygen tank, as “baseless”.

Boom Live also found that a video appearing to show people collapsing in the streets was not filmed during the current wave of infections, but instead in the aftermath of a poisonous gas leak in 2020.

Similarly, a video purporting to show an overflowing morgue full of COVID-19 victims in India appears to have originated in Russia last year.

Finally, a photo allegedly showing a woman hooked up to oxygen while awaiting an ambulance is from 2018, and is unrelated to the current pandemic, Boom Live reported.

How disinformation is reshaping war zones

Disinformation — false or misleading information shared with malicious intent — has wreaked havoc on attempts at peace in war-torn nations, mediation experts from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue say.

In a story published in Wired, the two colleagues from the private Swiss diplomacy organisation have detailed how “sophisticated networks of mis- and dis-information on social media” have made the already difficult job of peace negotiations even harder.

In Libya, for example, fake social media accounts originating outside the country were “fanning the flames of war on Facebook on Twitter”, as the United Nations held peace talks inside a hotel in Tunisia.

“They have alleged corruption, circulated false agreements and called for violence against those involved in the talks,” the mediators wrote.

Similar issues had arisen in Colombia, where disinformation contributed to the failure of government-led peace talks with rebels, and in Myanmar, where disinformation on Facebook was “widely implicated in the Rohingya genocide”.

So, what can we do about the problem?

The mediators say picking up on warning signs is important.

That can only be achieved, they say, with the help of on-the-ground intelligence collected by people with local language knowledge and an understanding of the context.

“Finding people who have those skills is hard, but the [social media] companies must do better,” the mediation experts insist.

“Their coverage of the ‘rest of the world’ remains dramatically under-resourced. If social media companies continue to offer their services in fragile states where the risk of violence is high, they must invest seriously in limiting the harm their platforms can do.”

Dedicated social media monitoring during peace talks, as is already undertaken during elections, could also be beneficial, as would greater involvement with organisations such as the UN.

“Fixing the online world will be a Sisyphean task, but just like ending wars in the real world, we have to try,” they wrote.

“Let’s not wait until the next ethnic cleansing abetted by online hate speech to have this conversation.”

Edited by Ellen McCutchan

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*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from ABC News can be found here ***