Monday, October 10, 2022
Mother, 32, fears condition that almost killed her during pregnancy was sparked by COVID - after studies linked the virus with stillbirths and other dangerous complications
A Brooklyn mother has issued an alarming warning about the risk catching the coronavirus can have on giving birth. Lauren Phillips told how she suffered from preeclampsia after having her baby and linked it to going down with the virus earlier in her pregnancy.
The 32-year-old attorney said she was rushed back into hospital with dangerously high blood pressure just days after having her son.
She urged would-be parents to avoid coronavirus during pregnancy and seek immediate medical advice because she says it saved her life.
It comes as experts fear catching Covid could cause deadly complications with childbirth and even lead to stillbirths.
A swathe of studies during the pandemic found women had a 60 percent greater risk of having preeclampsia if they had suffered from the virus.
Phillips sailed through an easy pregnancy aside from becoming infected with COVID in her second trimester, which she described in her blog as a 'mild cold.'
But a few days after her baby son Arthur was born in April, the Brooklyn-based attorney was rushed to the emergency room as her blood pressure hit 160/116.
Phillips, who was up to date with her vaccinations and was careful with masking, found she had preeclampsia doctors believe was linked to a February Omicron infection.
She wrote: 'In the last hours of labor before the c section my blood pressure started to rise, but after delivery it came down enough that I was discharged on day 3 post delivery.
'On day 5, I experienced a severe dizzy spell. I was sitting down at the time. It felt like a sudden pulse or pressure wave, making the room spin. I'd never experienced anything like it, it felt bizarre, and it frightened me. 'I called my doctor and she told me to call back if it happened again. A few hours later, it did.
'My husband ran out to Rite Aid and bought a blood pressure cuff, which indicated my pressure was up to 140/90.
'I also noticed that my ankles were starting to swell and had become much more swollen than they had even been during pregnancy. I called the doctor and she had me come to the emergency room.
'I was brought back to the labor and delivery ward for observation, where over the course of a few hours my pressure spiked to 160/116. 'Once it hit that level, the medical team started me on a magnesium drip and admitted me for severe preeclampsia. 'I stayed in the hospital for two days before the doctors had me stable on blood pressure-reducing medication (nifidipene).
'Happily, my hospital allowed my spouse and son to stay in the hospital with me for those two days, so I could give him a steady supply of milk and hold or breastfeed him when I was stable enough to do so.'
She added: 'After discharge with instructions to take my pressure 4 times per day at home, my pressure spiked again less than 24 hours later, necessitating a return to the hospital. 'There they gave me a high dose of blood pressure medication (labetelol) intravenously.
'I was able to return home the same day on two drugs which kept my pressure out of the danger zone.
'About 5 weeks later, after steady drops in my pressure week by week, I was able to come off both drugs. 'Now 3 months postpartum, my blood pressure has returned to the healthy levels I had pre-labor.'
Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy that results in 70,000 maternal and 500,000 fetal deaths worldwide each year, the Seattle Times reported, and the number of cases jumped during the pandemic.
The illness is just one part of a slew of information scientists are studying to learn more about how Covid affects pregnancy.
Experts say women who contracted Covid-19 during their pregnancy also face an elevated risk of stillbirths.
But they believe vaccination can help prevent these cases, with statistics showing unvaccinated women at higher risk of complications.
Earlier on in the pandemic, many thought the coronavirus didn't affect unborn fetuses because few babies were born with the infection.
But in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology study published in September, it was revealed that the infection damages the placenta's immune response to further infections.
'What we're seeing now is that the placenta is vulnerable to COVID-19, and the infection changes the way the placenta works, and that in turn is likely to impact the development of the fetus,' Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf said.
Scientists also believed Covid to be a virus that mainly affected the respiratory system - but it has now been proven to wreak havoc with the circulatory system too.
Doctors also fear a Covid infection may 'unmask' health conditions that a pregnant woman's immune system would otherwise be able to shield her from.
The placenta, an organ that attaches to the womb during pregnancy, connects with the umbilical cord and provides oxygen and nourishment from the mother's bloodstream to the baby.
In the fall and winter of 2021, Amy Heerema McKenney, a Cleveland Clinic pathologist whose job involves figuring out why some babies die, began receiving eerily similar reports of stillbirths, The Times reported. She recalled feeling 'pretty panicked' as she began to look into the cases, which happened in quick succession.
While a normal placenta is spongy and dark reddish hue, which shows the nourishing blood flowing through it, the ones she was studying from mothers who lost their babies were like nothing she'd ever seen.
They were firm, discolored, scarred, and more of a tan color. 'The degree of devastation was unique,' she said.
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Florida warns young men on Covid boosters
Florida, the third most populous US state, has warned young men they face a greater risk of dying after receiving Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, as the US government forks out billions of dollars on a new (third) round of Covid-19 boosters.
The Florida health department on Friday (Saturday AEDT) specifically warned 18 to 39 year old men against seeking Covid-19 vaccinations that use mRNA technology, citing new research that found this group had an 84 per cent higher chance of cardiac-related death within 28 days of vaccination.
“With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group,” the state’s health department said in a statement.
However the baseline chance of a heart attack among young adults was miniscule according to a 2020 Norwegian study of around 33,000 people: 2.1 per 100,000 people for those aged 20-29 and 16.9 for those aged between 30 and 39.
The warning comes amid growing debate in the US over the wisdom of mandating Covid-19 vaccines — which critics say failed to prevent transmission, illness or death — and waning interest among parents in vaccinating their children.
“Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health,” said Florida’s Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo.
“Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed – these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.”
Separate figures from the US Centre for Disease Control, released a day earlier, indicated 11.5m Americans had received one of the new ‘bivalent’ boosters so far, or around 5.3 per cent of the 212 million Americans who were eligible to receive the shots.
The US government in July contracted to pay Pfizer and Moderna around US$4.9bn for 171 million bivalent booster shots.
Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, said complaints that the new shots, which are meant to protect against all the Sars-Cov2 variants including Omicron, weren’t working were misleading.
“We‘ll likely see more of these. It doesn’t mean vaccines failed. The primary goal of vaccination – to reduce severity of illness – has not changed,” she said on social media on Friday.
Florida’s move to restrict Covid-19 vaccine coverage came after similar moves by jurisdictions in Europe, where Covid-19 boosters are no longer offered to healthy individuals under 65 and 50 in Norway and Denmark, respectively.
In the US, the CDC recommends a primary series of Covid-19 vaccination for everyone aged six months and up, boosters for those aged 12 and over.
Before the bivalent booster rollout began on 4th September, after the two shots received “emergency use authorisation” from the Food and Drug Administration, fewer than half of eligible Americans had received their first booster.
The Supreme Court in January overturned a Biden administration directive to compel all workers to receive the Covid-19 vaccines, reflecting efforts throughout the world to link Covid-19 vaccination to employment, education, in-person commerce, and freedom of movement.
Elite US universities, including Harvard and Stanford, and some healthcare settings have kept booster mandates for students, including the latest bivalent booster, a source of ongoing legal action and debate.
“Hey university presidents and trustees — how many cardiac deaths are acceptable as collateral damage?”, asked Todd Zywicki, as law professor at George Mason university, on social media soon after the Florida research was released.
Florida, which has a population around 21.5 million, stood out among US states in its response to Covid-19, ending lockdowns and mandates in early 2020, and last year banning ‘vaccine passports’, which were widely used across the US, throughout the state, to protect the unvaccinated against discrimination.
A federal appeals court upheld the state’s vaccine passport ban on Friday after a challenge by Norwegian cruise lines, based in Miami, which had sought to enforce vaccination among passengers.
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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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