Opinion | Period weirdness after covid vaccines: Readers react

More than 165,000 people answered her survey questions, many with disquieting tales of significant and worrisome changes to their periods and a lack of concern from the medical community.

Here are some readers’ reactions to her essay. Comments have been edited for clarity and brevity.

MB16: I got my period two weeks early, two days after getting the vaccine. Both my gynecologist, a woman, and primary care doctor, a man/nonbinary person, said that there was no correlation and that it was the result of stress, even though many, many women were reporting the same thing. The thing is, we know our own bodies better than anyone else, and we know when something is different. Like the author of this piece, I am not at all against vaccines — actually, I have had three. But I think it is absolutely true that people don’t want to talk about women’s health, don’t want to believe concerns that women have when they express them in the doctor’s office — and specifically don’t want to talk about menstruation.

CPTClasm: As a White male senior citizen, I am beginning to think one of the greatest impacts of the ongoing covid crisis is the awareness being generated of the overwhelming ignorance of the male half of the population when it comes to the actual truth lived by the other half. You know your body better than anyone. “Don’t let anyone dismiss your concerns” was the best advice a nurse practitioner gave my wife. It helped her get her (benign, thankfully) tumor removed and helped me realize a change in prescription was crippling me. I look forward to reading Clancy’s book!

Former Mermaid: I had no changes after any of my covid vaccinations, but last year, after receiving the second Shingrix vaccine [for shingles], I had several periods in close succession, with three entire menstrual cycles lasting between 12 and 18 days. I was unable to find any information about menstrual disruption and the Shingrix vaccine. Lots of things over the year have disrupted my cycle in different ways (viruses, stress, etc.), so I know that it isn’t a big cause for concern, but it would have been reassuring at the time to know that a normal side effect of vaccinations is a temporary change in your menstrual cycle.

Read the op-ed: Why reports of period weirdness after covid shots were ignored

JenniferQ: The vaccines wreaked havoc on my cycle for six months and left me terrified I was pregnant at 47 or seriously ill. How the entire medical industry could pretend this side effect was an illusion destroys faith in anything it does. Not that I had much faith left this far into my life.

Dkb2021: Being a doula who aided women in hospital births, it was clear as day that the opinions of the medical professionals overrule the experiences women have with their own bodies. If men in the medical industry cannot change their attitudes and their disrespect toward female patients, women in medicine need to develop a system of checks and balances to push the patriarchal relics to do what should’ve been done centuries ago — leave our bodies alone and let people who understand what having a uterus is really like help us. This includes childbirth.

I am not an anti-vaxxer, but I can understand how people would be freaked out about vaccines if the medical industry continues to deny the experiences and side effects people have from vaccines. This is just fuel for their fire.

Cwpolt: Having been over with menopause for years, age 60 when first vaccinated, I did not correlate that mild one-time-only breakthrough bleeding with my Moderna shot until weeks later, when other women’s stories started to make tiny headlines. Misinformation and anti-vax noise certainly gave the vaccine side-effect news a bad rap, before it even got considered seriously. What a sad time this is for women’s health issues in general.

BeBrecht: The phenomenon should have triggered questions in researchers about what mechanism in the vaccine could have caused the symptoms and changes. It may shed light on the causes of similar menstrual dysfunction before the vaccine. Most practicing doctors are not researchers; bringing this data to the right researchers’ attention is important. … I thought I heard recently that Florida wanted to make it illegal for students to discuss their menstrual periods. Ridiculous indeed. Keep up the good work.

Betsy Norris Voss: Given the choice of not-quite-normal periods or being on a ventilator and dying, I’ll take the former. That said, this should have been taken seriously. Doctors, even female doctors, are quick to dismiss the concerns of women. God forbid you be a woman of color.

tangelo7: I have worked in clinical trials for 25 years. Every clinical trial of a medication or biologic asks participants to report adverse events, whether related or unrelated to the product. There is literally a standardized set of questions (e.g., severity, outcome, relatedness) and answers (i.e., definitely related, probably related, possibly related, unlikely and unrelated [which is only if the product has not yet been administered]).

The site that tried to avoid documenting participants’ increased menstrual pain and increased bleeding was in violation of ICH E6(R2) Good Clinical Practice, which has the force of law in clinical trials regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and equivalent agencies in the European Union and Japan. …

Post-market research surveys … are not statistically valid because there is bias built into the design: The respondents are self-selected and using their memories. 165,000 occurrences is a lot, but not if there are 165 million others who had no menstrual changes.

trulyamoderate: When a religiously and ideologically motivated man, just one guy with no scientific or medical training or expertise, can upend the use of a well-researched, decades-old safe pharmaceutical — safer than Tylenol and penicillin — necessary to women’s reproductive health care, that tells you all you need to know about the value of women and their health care in this country.

EO in Washington: The Post’s decision to publish this (excellent) piece is the definition of service journalism. Thanks to the team that spotted and found room for this coverage, which made my jaw drop and affirmed a great deal of anecdotal evidence that’s been discussed among friends but, obviously, has been dismissed (by medical researchers, by other outlets, by some of the commenters here) even though it affects a significant number of people. More of this, please, and other pieces that focus on the information needs of women and other groups whose concerns have been historically underrepresented in this section.

NZBronco: The “art of noticing” is the core of good science. Ideology is about a reality that is fixed and determined. “Not wanting to know” is bad science and worse public policy. Thank you for your good essay.