Ron DeSantis is now trafficking in COVID conspiracy theories. He’s complaining about health care workers being required to get vaccinated and suggesting that the vaccines cause infertility.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a foe of vaccine mandates, appeared to suggest Thursday that getting a shot to protect against the coronavirus could cause infertility.
“Think about how ridiculous it is what they’re doing by trying to force the nurses” to get immunized, he said in a speech announcing funding for nursing certification programs. “A lot of these nurses have had covid. A lot of them are younger. Some of them are trying to have families.”FAQ: What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus
But there is no evidence that getting vaccinated against the coronavirus makes it harder to conceive, according to a study released Thursday of heterosexual couples trying for pregnancy. DeSantis could not be immediately reached for a comment on his remarks.
By contrast, men infected with the coronavirus showed signs of a short-term decline in fertility, according to the research, which was led by an epidemiologist at Boston University and published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Epidemiology. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The researchers studied more than 2,000 people between the ages of 21 and 45, all of whom identified as women, in the United States and Canada between December 2020 and September 2021. (Their male partners were also invited to fill in a questionnaire.) Some 73 percent of the women had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine during the study, with 74 percent of the men also having been administered at least one shot.
“Recent [coronavirus] infection has been associated with poor sperm quality, including … decreased concentration, lower motility,” the authors wrote. But “we found no adverse association between vaccination and fertility.”
Apparently he has decided that his political future depends upon him pushing the envelope on anti-vax conspiracies, putting him to the right of Donald Trump. It’s quite strategy…
I sure hope DeSantis doesn’t get this unfortunate side-effect:
A man’s agonizing penis pain was blamed on COVID infection, as docs warned of the rare side effect.
Writing in a medical journal, the Iranian team described how the virus led to blood clotting in the poor man’s shaft.
The unnamed male had suffered penile pain for three days before being seen by a urologist in Iran, who referred him for tests.
The discomfort began following an erection while having sex, the 41-year-old married man told doctors.
If anything getting COVID seems to cause more trouble with men’s reproductive system’s than women. Maybe that ought to be publicized more. I’ll bet it would get a whole lot of men vaccinated if they knew.