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In this Slay News article, linked to by popular right-wing aggregator Off The Press:

According to independent journalist JD Rucker, the establishment media and their allies are ignoring the obvious. “Ever since the rollout of Covid-19 ‘vaccines,’ evidence started emerging that they caused reproductive damage to recipients,” Rucker writes.

Is there any evidence linking a Covid vaccine to infertility, especially infertility rate?

TheAsh
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  • Comments should be used to clarify the question, not post answers or opinions. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:44
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    Welcome to the Skeptics Site, Hot Network Questions users. Again, do NOT post answers or opinions in the comments here. Also, we *know* the sources of the claims aren't reliable; that's kind of what makes the question appropriate for here. – Oddthinking Jul 12 '23 at 20:03

2 Answers2

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JD Rucker claims that a falling birth rate is the result of reproductive damage caused by Covid-19 vaccines. However he does not say if he means all the vaccines or just some of them: none are specifically mentioned.

The claim seems to be centred around the news that Australia's birth rate in the first three months of 2023 were the lowest on record, and that it is not just Australia. I'll start by putting that into a broader context.

It is well known that the global birth rate has been falling for over half a century, as reported by (among many others) BBC News in 2020:

Fertility rate: 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born
In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime... Researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017.

It is substantiated by this graph from Our World in Data

enter image description here

If you hover over the original graph you can see the year for each node, and from 1968 until 2021 there was a fall in the birth rate in most years, with a small rise in some. But it doesn't deal with any affect of Covid vaccines, because there is about 2 years lead time from the 2019 outbreak of Covid-19 due to vaccines being developed and gestation.

There has, however been research into the possibility of the Covid-19 vaccines causing reproductive problems.

Here is a study published in 2022 by the Elsevier journal Vaccine and made available by the National Library of Medicine.

The impact of COVID-19 vaccines on fertility-A systematic review and meta-analysis
Background
Despite literature’s evidence about COVID-19 vaccines' safety, concerns have arisen regarding adverse events, including the possible impact on fertility, accentuated by misinformation and anti-vaccine campaigns. The present study aims to answer the question: Is there any impact of COVID-19 vaccines on the fertility of men and women of reproductive age?
. . .
Conclusion
Based on the studies published so far, there is no scientific proof of any association between COVID-19 vaccines and fertility impairment in men or women.

And here is another article from the National Library of Medicine in 2022.

COVID-19 vaccine - can it affect fertility?
Abstract
Headlines have appeared across multiple social media platforms questioning the effects of newly authorised COVID-19 vaccines on fertility. Although the effects on future fertility were not studied in the initial trials, at present, there is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine has any effect of future fertility. It is well known that pregnant women are at a higher risk of complications associated with COVID-19 such as ICU admission and death, and there is a rare but tragic increase in placentitis and stillbirth, highlighting the importance for those planning a pregnancy any time in the future to be vaccinated. Here we summarise international consensus from multiple organisations advising on fertility and the COVID-19 vaccine. Preliminary studies all suggest that there is neither link, nor indeed any theoretical reason why any of the COVID-19 vaccines might affect fertility. Dissemination of misinformation regarding the impact of the vaccine on future fertility needs to be controlled in order to avoid any hesitancy amongst young women attending for vaccination. It is also vital that the medical profession counteract this information, and, in order to do that, healthcare providers must be well informed on the latest recommendations and research.

What these articles say, is that

  • there is no scientific proof of any association between COVID-19 vaccines and fertility impairment in men or women

  • there is neither link, nor indeed any theoretical reason why any of the COVID-19 vaccines might affect fertility

Although it might be early days to draw a definite conclusion, JD Rucker's claim is a generalisation based on his own self-confessed lack of knowledge, and a "prima facie apparent cause", which means he has not actually investigated its truth.

In other words, the claim is groundless.

Weather Vane
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    Well debunked. Also worth mentioning that the antivaxxers who are so ready to attribute any trend to Covid vaccines almost always ignore the possibility that the trend might be due to Covid itself, rather than the vaccine. – Michael Kay Jul 10 '23 at 09:05
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    And another point: the most rapid recent decline in fertility rates is in Africa, where vaccination rates were relatively low. – Michael Kay Jul 10 '23 at 09:07
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    @MichaelKay I love the use of *prima facie* which makes the claim sound important like *first degree* or *prime suspect* etc, whereas it means "without examining in detail". – Weather Vane Jul 10 '23 at 09:08
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    a nice of example of how a statement that takes 15 seconds to say, requires a lot of work to debunk. – OrigamiEye Jul 10 '23 at 09:19
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    I found this unconvincing. No doubt that fertility rates across the world have been dropping for years. Whether this is a problem is a political question. But that doesn't mean that vaccines haven't caused an even larger drop. I think you need to show that the data from, say, 12 months after the first dose, isn't worse than the old trend. Factoring in that in many populous areas vaccination rates are distressingly low, that means your graphs seem to stop too early. 2021 is too soon to see the alleged effect. – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 14:21
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    @Oddthinking You've got the burden of evidence the wrong way around there. The original claim has no evidence and is predicated on both faulty reasoning and an untrue premise, so it's debunked. This is skeptics stackexchange, not font of absolute truth stackexchange. – Matthew Wells Jul 10 '23 at 14:42
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    @Oddthinking It's probably too soon to have enough data about trends since the Covid outbreak. So while we might not be able to say definitively that it *hasn't* caused fertility decline, it also means Rucker can't say that it *has*. And it's certainly not "prima facie" true. – Barmar Jul 10 '23 at 14:44
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    @MatthewWells: Yeah, one of the weird consequences of how this site is set up is that it completely reverses the burden of evidence. We take claims precisely when the claimant did NOT meet that burden, and then we put the burden on the answerer. It is unfair, but if you are going to step up and answer a question, you need to take that on. – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 14:51
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    @Barmar: This answer is presenting graphs heading up to 2021. Those graphs don't undermine the claimant's position at all, so they are nothing but misleading. They should be removed. – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 14:52
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    @MatthewWells: To be clear: An answer that "no-one knows" is acceptable here, but you need to justify that with evidence. One solution to that dilemma that we generally accept is finding a suitable expert who has done any necessary literature search, and quote them as saying the information isn't available. It is an "appeal to authority", but the best we can hope for in those cases. – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 14:55
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    @Oddthinking The claim being interrogated here is not whether vaccines will cause birth rate drops. The claim is that “Ever since the rollout of Covid-19 ‘vaccines,’ evidence started emerging that they caused reproductive damage to recipients,” – Matthew Wells Jul 10 '23 at 14:57
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    @MatthewWells: I am sorry for being obtuse; I am not sure of your point here. (That evidence might be case studies. It might be in vitro studies. It might be epidemiological trends. I think you and I both suspect it is pure politically-motivated invention, but we are looking for evidence-based answers here.) – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 15:02
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    @Oddthinking The answer includes a link to a meta-analysis that says "Based on the studies published so far, there is no scientific proof" -- that's hardly consistent with the claim that it's "prima facie" obvious. It's also not "no one knows". – Barmar Jul 10 '23 at 15:02
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    @Barmar: Great. Let's put that front and centre, and lose the misleading graphs and the tangential discussion about fertility over the past 50 years. – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 15:04
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    I don't see how the graphs are misleading - the fact that decreasing fertility rates is a 50 year trend is evidence that decreasing fertility rates this year are not due to an event that happened last year. If fertility rates were increasing but suddenly reversed (like life expectancy in the last two years) the claim would be more credible – CJR Jul 10 '23 at 15:41
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    @CJR I don't think that logic holds: for the question "is there a change in gradient at point `t`?", you need to know the gradient both before _and_ after `t`. Given a graph showing a car slowly accelerating to 30mph, you can't say anything about whether the driver pressed the accelerator or the brake immediately _after_ the data on the graph. Similarly, if there was a sharp decrease in fertility after the latest non-projected data on those graphs, it would _by definition_ not be predictable from the data on those graphs. – IMSoP Jul 10 '23 at 16:24
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    IF I told you that 3.2 million people died in the US this year and they were all because of vaccination, a reasonable part of the response would be "3.2m people die every year in the US". You're arguing that knowing the historical trend for that measurement has no value and should be ignored, which is nonsense. You absolutely can use "there is no change from a historical trend" as evidence against a causal change in something, and the larger the change from the trend the greater the evidence a causal change has occurred. – CJR Jul 10 '23 at 16:53
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    A slightly later paper [COVID-19 vaccine - can it affect fertility? ] (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34651258/) also concludes: "Preliminary studies all suggest that there is neither link, nor indeed any theoretical reason why any of the COVID-19 vaccines might affect fertility." There are several papers trying to answer whether Covid-19 infection itself affects fertility. – jeffronicus Jul 10 '23 at 17:01
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    @Oddthinking you don't like me showing those graphs, yet you say *"No doubt that fertility rates across the world have been dropping for years."* You would not have accepted such a statement from me, and I added graphs because they substantiate the three extracts at the beginning which say it. And the reason for *that* was to show the drop in birth rate isn't a sudden thing but a general pattern which puts JD Rucker's assertion in context. It isn't even as though they were able to show a trend since 2019 + (1 year for a vaccine) + (almost 1 year for gestation). As commented, can anyone? – Weather Vane Jul 10 '23 at 18:16
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    ... and @OrigamiEye said *"a nice of example of how a statement that takes 15 seconds to say, requires a lot of work to debunk."* If you insist that answers to groundless claims go chapter and verse into the current state of research then you empower the people who make them. OTOH just saying "you are wrong" or closing the question are inadequate to refute their wild claims. Why isn't it sufficient to show that there is currently no scientific reason why this wholely spurious claim is true? ... – Weather Vane Jul 10 '23 at 18:16
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    @Oddthinking "... that doesn't mean that vaccines haven't caused an even larger drop" The burden of truth is on the person making the claim. – Simon Crase Jul 10 '23 at 19:24
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    @SimonCrase: We've covered this in the comments above. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:45
  • @WeatherVane: re: "No doubt...." Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you could just stipulate that in an answer and all the readers would agree. I just meant to establish that you and I have a lot of common ground here - we are not arguing over the facts, just the presentation. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:47
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    The presentation includes two graphs. The first one extends into the future with projections that assume the claim isn't true - it begs the question. The second one stops at... the end of 2020? Somewhere in 2021? I found it difficult to be sure. I think the graphs are misleading because they don't have data for the relevant period. I think you are only using them to show there has been an historical decline, but they are big and prominent and misleading. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:52
  • When I look for a summary - what the answer to the question is, the first clear statement I see is "No, Covid vaccines were not the cause of lower fertility rates." It would be anachronistic to claim COVID vaccines have been the cause of lower fertility rates **coming up to 2021**, but if the claim is true, they may have caused a sudden drop since then. This conclusion is misleading. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:55
  • Hidden in the middle, as @Barmar points out, is a great result. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:57
  • @CJR: "You absolutely can use "there is no change from a historical trend"": Agreed, but there is no evidence here that there is no change from a historical trend. If you think the charts showed that it supports my contention that they are misleading. – Oddthinking Jul 11 '23 at 01:59
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    @Oddthinking I've re-edited the answer to take on some of your suggestions. – Weather Vane Jul 11 '23 at 11:39
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    @jeffronicus thanks, I have now included that in the answer. – Weather Vane Jul 11 '23 at 11:40
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    https://aifs.gov.au/research/facts-and-figures/births-australia-2023 here's a specific reference to the fertility rate in Australia being higher in 2021 and 2022 than it was in 2019 or 2020 – CJR Jul 11 '23 at 11:53
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    @CJR thank you for that. The global rate did rise in a few years but almost every year since 1968 has been "the lowest birth rate on record". I am unsure whether JD Rucker is an anti vaxxer clutching at straws; but the claim bears the hallmarks of one who is looking for a reason to justify their belief, and tells a half-story to convince others of like mind. – Weather Vane Jul 11 '23 at 12:13
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Fertility Rate:

[The] average number of children born to women during their reproductive years.
— Fertility rate | Britannica

The fertility rate of a population is affected by individual choice (celibacy, contraception, abortion, postponing first child, etc.).

Fertility:

[The] ability of an individual or couple to reproduce through normal sexual activity. About 90 percent of healthy, fertile women are able to conceive within one year if they have intercourse regularly without contraception. Normal fertility requires the production of enough healthy sperm by the male and viable eggs by the female, successful passage of the sperm through open ducts from the male testes to the female fallopian tubes, penetration of a healthy egg, and implantation of the fertilized egg in the lining of the uterus (see reproductive system). A problem with any of these steps can cause infertility.
— Fertility | Britannica

The fertility of an individual is affected by disease, injury, drugs, etc.

Fertility is what individual people are physically capable of achieving.
Fertility Rate is what people have collectively achieved.

The claim is conflating these two concepts.

If COVID-19 vaccines did have a significant effect on individual fertility, it would cause a reduction in the fertility rate. But that reduction int the fertility rate would be very small in comparison to the actual reduction in individual fertility. To have a significant effect, the vaccine would have to cause severe infertility in a very large percentage of the population, something that we know hasn't happened.

This claim is confusing cause and effect by saying that because there is a reduction in the fertility rate, it must have been caused by COVID-19 vaccine.

That's bad logic applied to misrepresented facts.

And as The Mayo Clinic says:

There is no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in men or women.

Ray Butterworth
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  • This doesn't address the question. The article warns that the fertility rate is low. Rucker says one of causes is COVID=19 vaccines do "reproductive damage", which as you point out would reduce fertility and thus the fertility rate. You are right that one mustn't assume that the correlation of vaccines and fertility drop implies causality... but that is why the question was asked. *Is* there causality? – Oddthinking Jul 10 '23 at 14:12
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    Did you mean to say "**If** it's true"? – Barmar Jul 10 '23 at 14:45
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    This seems like a long-winded way to say "correlation does not equal causation". – Barmar Jul 10 '23 at 14:46
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    *It's true that if COVID-19 vaccines did have a significant effect on individual fertility, it would cause a reduction in the fertility rate.* — only if the effect is huge, or if individual fertility is a limiting factor in total fertility rate, which it's not, really. Even if the number of actually infertile people would increase by a factor 5, that would probably be statistically negligible in the total fertility rate, because other reasons to have no children (or just one) are far more common. – gerrit Jul 10 '23 at 15:06