Miranda Slade
Last month, the BBC revealed that over 30,000 people reported changes to their menstrual cycle after receiving a Coronavirus vaccine. If the flames of vaccine hesitancy were spreading through young women before, this oversight didn’t just fan them so much as take a hose of petrol.
The Office of National Statistics says 1 in 5 women aged 16-29 in the UK reports feelings of vaccine hesitancy. Data from May 2021 shows 31% of vaccine-hesitant women cited concerns about fertility.
With this data widely available, why was more effort not made to counteract the fears around menstrual cycle changes?
Well, because it wasn’t measured in the vaccine trials.
Anti-vaxxers will influence people rightly disturbed about the lack of answers as to why their periods mysteriously disappeared post-vaccine.
How did a huge number of young women in the UK become vaccine-hesitant?
The straightforward answer is they find the effect of coronavirus vaccines on their future fertility terrifying. But these fears have been stoked by online anti-vax communities spreading misinformation.
Back in November 2020, I raised a – desperately in need of maintenance – eyebrow when I went to the Instagram page of one of my beloved ‘eyebrow ladies.’ Like so many other overgrown customers, I was bidding for an appointment ASAP.
On her business’s Instagram story, she had shared a meme featuring the child victims of the Thalidomide scandal. The caption read: “They said Thalidomide was safe.”
Thalidomide was a drug given to pregnant women to treat morning sickness in the UK between 1958 and 1962. However, this drug resulted in many babies being born with limb deformities. Now, it is likened to the recently approved Pfizer vaccine.
Despite the shock, I wrote it off as a weird corner of Instagram I’d discovered. The meme looked pretty Windows ‘98, anyway, I thought to myself.
But ‘Thalidomide’ kept appearing on my feed. I searched ‘Thalidomide’ on Twitter, and was alarmed by the number of users repeating the same phrase: “They said Thalidomide was safe.”
That phrase is parroted, word-for-word, from a proliferation of anti-vax memes. Scaremongering black and white images of limbless children presented without context. Most fail to clarify that Thalidomide isn’t even a vaccine.
Without evidence to rebut the anti-vaxxers, which should be clear from vaccine trials, disruption to menstrual cycles became ‘proof’ the vaccine harmed fertility.
According to Victoria Male in the BMJ, menstrual changes are likely to be “a result of the immune response to vaccination” – ‘likely’ isn’t ideal, but we’ll take whatever clarification we can get.
Now, let’s be clear. Just as those who are vaccine-hesitant are not necessarily ‘anti-vax’, I do not wish to be ‘anti-vaccine-hesitant young women’.
Understanding and empathising with others is key to starting a conversation with those who feel hesitant and attempt to give reassurance. In order to do so, we have to examine the social causes that drive women towards vaccine-hesitant feelings.
These women have been gaslit, so of course, they are incendiary.
Let’s analyse the spread of vaccine hesitancy amongst young women.
As epidemiologists know, prevention is better than cure. This is why we need to tackle the root causes of the growing vaccine-hesitancy movement in the UK: poor sex education, medical gaslighting and economic insecurity.
Who understands fertility anyway?
All formal sex education in the UK is pitiful. Many women don’t learn about fertility until they start trying for a child. The prevalence of the myth that you can get pregnant from a toilet seat, or a hot tub, proves how vulnerable we are to disinformation in this area.
When it comes to sexual healthcare, so many of us were put on the pill at an early age, never educated on the side effects. Instead, we play a pharmaceutical pass the parcel with different pills until one was bearable. The average wait for an Endometriosis diagnosis in the UK is seven years; due to the received wisdom ‘periods are supposed to be painful.’
These biases uphold the medieval myth uteruses are mysterious, painful and illogical. Fertility is more of a virtue than a science. As a result, these experiences might lead you to believe authority, don’t tell you the whole ‘truth’, or can’t understand your biology.
How the ‘Shecession’ creates conspiracies
My first brush with anti-vaxxers was via a beautician. As I followed her down the anti-vax rabbit hole, I discovered beauty industry workers make up a noticeable proportion of those sharing the message.
‘Pink collar jobs’ is the term given to workforces dominated by women. These sectors, including beauty, travel, retail and events, were some of the worst-hit by the pandemic.
So bad, that the post-Covid economic downturn has been dubbed the Shecession. On average, women’s earnings dropped by 12.9 per cent.
Research has shown feeling powerless and disillusioned can make you more vulnerable to conspiracy theories. Conspiracy gives an alternative, secret, explanation creating a sense of truth and certainty to grip onto. Conspiracy can also mean community, a powerful idea when socially distanced.
Above all, barely anyone (journalists aside) goes out to gawk at #antivax content on social media. People found themselves on a new side of Instagram, Twitter or TikTok by accident, or by algorithm, as seemingly innocent pages started posting more controversial content.
Flip-flopping and alleged corruption from the UK Government didn’t help either. Research by the Vaccine Confidence Project draws a line between distrusting a government and distrust of their vaccine.
As epidemiologists know, prevention is better than cure. This is why we need to tackle the root causes of the growing vaccine-hesitancy movement in the UK: poor sex education, medical gaslighting and economic insecurity. Data from the Office of National Statistics shows only 1.2% of the 51,000 who died with Covid-19 between January and July 2021 received both vaccines.
If we don’t tackle the root causes behind the anti-vaccine movement amongst young women, this will be the next women’s health crisis.
Featured image courtesy of Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash. Second image courtesy of Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash. Image license for both of these found here. No changes were made to these images.
