No Link Between COVID Vaccine and Autism

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Liz Szabo at CIDRAP

A study today finds no increase in autism rates in babies born to mothers who received COVID-19 vaccines just before or during pregnancy, compared with children of unvaccinated moms.

The authors of the study, who presented their findings at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine 2026 Pregnancy Meeting, told CIDRAP News they hope the research will help dispel myths about COVID-19 vaccines, which multiple studies have found to be safe and effective during pregnancy.

Half of the 434 children in the study, conducted at 14 medical facilities from May 2024 to March 2025, were born to mothers who received at least one dose of an mRNA vaccine during or within 30 days before pregnancy. The other half of the children in the study were born to mothers who weren’t vaccinated before or during pregnancy.

Researchers evaluated toddlers between the ages of 18 months and 30 months for signs of autism using four standard screenings: the Ages and Stages Questionnaire Version 3 (ASQ-3), the Child Behavior Checklist, the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, and the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire. None of these measures are used to make a definitive diagnosis of autism, but they can indicate a need for further testing.

When the researchers compared the scores on all four screening assessments, they found no significant differences between the children born to vaccinated mothers and those born to unvaccinated mothers.

“The fact that there were no differences on all four of these outcomes is evidence that COVID vaccination does not result in developmental concerns for most children,” said Alycia Halladay, PhD, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation, who was not involved in the new study. “For people who are worried that taking the COVID vaccine during pregnancy may cause autism, the study is pretty clear, convincing evidence that it does not.”

The authors of the study said its results are reassuring.

“We found no evidence in our study or in other studies that [the COVID] vaccine causes harm to the children,” said George R. Saade, MD, the new study’s first author and professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University.

COVID-19 As Risk Factor

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what causes the condition.

A release from Mass General Brigham:

Children born to mothers who had COVID-19 while pregnant face an elevated risk of developmental disorders by the time they turn 3 years old, including speech delays, autism, motor disorders, and other developmental delays, according to new research by investigators at Mass General Brigham. The findings are published in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

“These findings highlight that COVID-19, like many other infections in pregnancy, may pose risks not only to the mother, but to fetal brain development,” said senior author Andrea Edlow, MD MSc, a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mass General Brigham. “They also support the importance of trying to prevent COVID-19 infection in pregnancy and are particularly relevant when public trust in vaccines—including the COVID-19 vaccine—is being eroded.”

Other maternal infections during pregnancy have been linked with risk for a range of neurodevelopmental diseases during childhood, and animal studies have shown that immune activation during pregnancy disrupts normal fetal brain development and offspring behavior. To assess the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy, investigators analyzed data on 18,124 live births at Mass General Brigham within the peak COVID-19 window of March 2020 to May 2021.

The investigators studied 18,124 mother-child pairs. Among the 861 children whose mothers were SARS-CoV-2–positive during pregnancy, 140 (16.3%) received a neurodevelopmental diagnosis by 3 years of age, compared with 1,680 (9.7%) of the 17,263 remaining children from SARS-CoV-2–negative pregnancies. After adjusting for other influencing factors, SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy was associated with 29% higher odds of a neurodevelopmental condition in children.

The investigators also found that males were at higher risk than females. Risk was greatest when infection occurred during the third trimester of pregnancy.

While reducing risk is important, co-senior author Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, of the Mass General Brigham Department of Psychiatry, noted, “The overall risk of adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in exposed children likely remains low.”

First author and Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist Lydia Shook, MD, added, “Parental awareness of the potential for adverse child neurodevelopmental outcomes after COVID-19 in pregnancy is key. By understanding the risks, parents can appropriately advocate for their children to have proper evaluation and support.”

Here is a long. growing, and probably incomplete list of other correlates, risk factors, and possible causes that have been the subject of serious studies: 

1. Inflammatory bowel disease;
2. Pesticides;
3. Air pollution and proximity to freeways;
4. Maternal thyroid issues;
5. Autoimmune disorders;
6. Induced labor;
7. Preterm birth;
8. Fever;  
9. Birth by cesarean section;
10. Anesthesia during cesarean sections;
11. Maternal and paternal obesity;
12. Maternal diabetes;
13. Maternal and paternal age;
14. Grandparental age;
15. Maternal post-traumatic stress disorder;
16. Maternal anorexia;
17. Smoking during pregnancy;
18. Cannabis use during pregnancy;
19. Antidepressant use during pregnancy;
20. Polycystic ovary syndrome;
21. Infant opioid withdrawal;
22. Zinc deficiency;
23. Sulfate deficiency;
24. Processed foods;
25. Maternal occupational exposure to solvents;
26. Congenital heart disease;
27. Insufficient placental allopregnanolone.
28. Estrogen in the womb;
29. Morning sickness;
30. Paternal family history;
31. Parental preterm birth;
32. Antiseizure meds
33. Location of forebears
34. Lithium
35. Aspartame
36. BPA
37. Brain inflammation
38. Maternal asthma
39. Infertility
40. Ultraprocessed foods
41. Household chemicals
42. Parental psychiatric disorders
43. Fluoride
44. Fatty acids in umbilical cord blood
45. Maternal inflammation during pregnancy

Kennedy v. Public Health

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

This week's CDC purge is just the lastest installment of RFK Jr's war on public health.

 Brandy Zadrozny at MSNBC:

Save for his confirmation hearing and private promises to Cassidy, Kennedy has clearly communicated his intentions to dismantle the CDC. Over decades of activism and lawyering, Kennedy has cast the CDC as the villain in his vaccine conspiracy theories, calling the agency a “cesspool of corruption,” filled with doctors and scientists who seek to profit off of injured children.

In just seven months, Kennedy has: pushed sweeping budget cuts and canceled billions in research and development; overseen mass layoffs and reorganizations that erased whole teams tackling clear health threats; without justification, withdrawn Covid vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant people; gutted the agency’s vaccine advisory panel, firing respected experts and replacing them with ideological loyalists; installed a vocal Covid vaccine critic to chair a safety subcommittee; reopened the long-debunked vaccines-and-autism debate, promising a cause by September; hired a discredited anti-vaccine researcher who experimented on autistic children to trawl government data and relitigate settled science; pressed for access to private data to fuel his project; undermined his own epidemiologists during the Texas measles response; downplayed a shooting that left CDC staff shaken; announced sweeping policy changes on social media with no data to back them and accused the American Academy of Pediatrics of a “pay-to-play scheme” for daring to dissent. He’s done it all mostly from the road, on a national MAHA tour, where between performative push-ups and pull-ups, he’s cheered GOP states as they have restricted food benefits for low-income families.

Vaccines and Autism: Lit Review

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

Gulati, S., Sharawat, I. K., Panda, P. K., & Kothare, S. V. (2025). The vaccine–autism connection: No link, still debate, and we are failing to learn the lessons. Autism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613251345281

In the post-COVID-19 era, vaccine hesitancy remains a critical challenge, despite clear evidence of the life-saving benefits of childhood vaccinations, which prevent morbidity and mortality while reducing healthcare costs (Andre et al., 2008; Ozawa et al., 2016). Hesitancy is particularly prevalent among caregivers of autistic children, contributing to delayed or incomplete vaccination in this group. Studies show that autistic children are less likely to be fully vaccinated compared to their non-autistic peers, and this hesitancy extends to younger siblings (Cummings et al., 2016; Filliter et al., 2017; Gerber & Offit, 2009; Mitchell & Locke, 2015; Pluviano et al., 2019; Zerbo et al., 2018). The persistent belief in the now-debunked link between vaccines, especially the MMR vaccine, and autism continues to drive hesitancy. Despite the extensive scientific refutation of this claim, caregivers of children with autism diagnoses often hold disproportionate fears that vaccines cause or worsen autism, even when they are aware of the lack of evidence (Cummings et al., 2016; Gerber & Offit, 2009; Pluviano et al., 2019). Post-pandemic, new factors have emerged, including heightened concerns related to sensory sensitivities, phobias, and logistical barriers in medical settings, all of which complicate vaccine uptake. While some studies suggest a declining belief in the vaccine–autism link among the general population (Filliter et al., 2017; Mitchell & Locke, 2015), it remains uncertain whether these shifts apply to caregivers of autistic children.

Repeating the Myth in Louisiana

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Some of the spreaders of misinformation have credentials.

Skafle et al. at Journal of Medical Internet Research

A well-known false claim is that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause autism [9]. The claim has since been empirically refuted many times but is still stated as a major concern for some parents [10]. Motta and Steccula [11] examined American public opinion data on MMR safety collected before and after a retracted 1998 study linking autism to MMR. The researchers detected a statistically significant increase in public concern about MMR safety following the retracted study and the media attention it received. This suggests that misleading vaccine information can impact public confidence in vaccines and cause skepticism about vaccines in general.

Piper Hutchinson at Louisiana Public Radio:

Dozens of anti-vaccine bills have died in the Louisiana Legislature since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultra-conservative lawmakers are gearing up for another fight.

In the process, truth has become a major casualty.

In two days of hearings last week on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security heard hours of testimony from doctors with fringe views on the COVID-19 virus. They included the state’s chief medical doctor, Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, who himself amplified misinformation. Abraham is a general practitioner who is also a veterinarian.

“It’s been my observation that nearly every intervention attempted by government has been ineffective, counterproductive and antithetical to the core principles of a free society,” Abraham said last Thursday, citing mask use and vaccines as examples of ineffective measures.

Abraham’s deputy surgeon general, ophthalmologist Dr. Wyche Coleman III, went a step further, touting the debunked theory that childhood vaccinations cause autism.

“You could probably fill Tiger Stadium with moms who have kids that were normal one day, got a vaccine and were then autistic after,” Coleman told lawmakers.

Autism and COVID

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss evaluation, diagnosis, and the uncertainty of prevalence estimates.

From the Columbia University Irving Medical Center:

Children born during the first year of the pandemic, including those exposed to COVID in utero, were no more likely to screen positive for autism than unexposed or pre-pandemic children, found researchers from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.


The study(link is external and opens in a new window), published in JAMA Network Open, is the first report on autism risk among pandemic-era children.

“Autism risk is known to increase with virtually any kind of insult to mom during pregnancy, including infection and stress,” says Dani Dumitriu, associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry and senior author of the study. “The scale of the COVID pandemic had pediatricians, researchers, and developmental scientists worried that we would see an uptick in autism rates. But reassuringly, we didn’t find any indication of such an increase in our study.”

It’s important to note, Dumitriu adds, that the study did not look at autism diagnosis, only the risk of developing autism as measured by a screening questionnaire filled in by the child’s parents. “It’s too early to have definitive diagnostic numbers,” she says. “But this screener is predictive, and it’s not showing that prenatal exposure to COVID or the pandemic increases the likelihood of autism.

“There has been broad speculation about how the COVID generation is developing, and this study gives us the first glimmer of an answer with respect to autism risk.”
Investigating autism risk and COVID

Dumitriu’s team has been studying the potential effects of pandemic-related maternal stress and maternal infection on child neurodevelopment at different points since birth through the COMBO (COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes) Initiative. Children who were in the womb during the first phases of the pandemic are now reaching the age when early indicators of autism risk could emerge.

The current study examined nearly 2,000 children born at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Allen Hospital between January 2018 and September 2021. Autism risk was calculated based on responses from a neurodevelopment screening questionnaire that pediatricians give to parents to evaluate toddlers’ behavior. Scores were compared for children born during and prior to the pandemic and for children with and without in utero exposure to COVID. All children were screened between 16 and 30 months of age.

Reassuring results

The researchers found no difference in positive autism screenings between children born before the pandemic and those born during the pandemic.

“COVID is still quite prevalent, so this is comforting news for pregnant individuals who are worried about getting sick and the potential impact on autism risk,” Dumitriu says.

Surprisingly, the study also found that fewer children exposed to COVID in utero screened positive for autism compared with children whose moms did not have COVID.

“We suspect that having COVID during pregnancy may have influenced parents’ assessment of their child’s behaviors,” Dumitriu says. “Parents who did not have COVID may have experienced higher stress—due to the constant worry of getting sick and the vigilance around preventing infection—and may have been more likely to report concerning child behaviors.”

Could autism show up later in childhood?

As the children age, the researchers will continue to monitor them for autism diagnoses. But based on the current results, Dumitriu thinks it unlikely that an uptick in autism related to COVID will occur.

“Children who were in the womb early in the pandemic are now reaching the age when early indicators of autism would emerge, and we’re not seeing them in this study,” Dumitriu says. “And because it’s well-known that autism is influenced by the prenatal environment, this is highly reassuring.”

But other impairments may emerge later, and the researchers will continue to study the children’s neurodevelopment as they age.

Several studies of infants who were in utero during previous pandemics, natural disasters, famines, and wartime have shown that other neurodevelopmental conditions, potentially triggered by the stressful environment, can emerge in adolescence and even early adulthood.

“We need to acknowledge the unique experience and environment of children who were born during the pandemic—including parental stress and social isolation—and continue to monitor them for potential developmental or psychiatric differences,” says Morgan Firestein, associate research scientist in psychiatry and first author of the study.

Topics
Infectious Diseases, COVID-19, Pediatrics, Research

References

More information

Dani Dumitriu, MD, is also an attending pediatrician in the Newborn Medicine Section at NewYork-Presbyterian's Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.

The study, titled "Positive Autism Screening Rates in Toddlers Born During the Covid-19 Pandemic(link is external and opens in a new window),” was published online Sept. 23, 2024, in JAMA Network Open.
.

Special Education After COVID

  In The Politics of Autism, I write about special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. II also discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families. Those challenges get far more intense during disasters.  And coronavirus proved to be the biggest disaster of all. 

Sara Randazzo  and  Matt Barnum at WSJ:

More American children than ever are qualifying for special education, but schools are struggling to find enough teachers to meet their needs.

A record 7.5 million students accessed special-education services in U.S. schools as of 2022-2023, including children with autism, speech impairments and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. That is 15.2% of the public-school student population, up from less than 13% a decade earlier, the most recent federal data shows.

Several factors are driving the increase. Pandemic disruptions left kids with lingering learning and behavioral challenges. Parents have become more assertive about asking for services, as the stigma around special education has lessened. Autism diagnoses have also risen in recent decades, and the state of Texas has seen a boom in special education after changing an approach that had limited access.

...

Since students returned to school, special-education teachers say they are seeing more mental-health issues and extreme behaviors, including students hitting staff, making lewd remarks and throwing furniture. Having the right support, like an aide to help a student calm down when they get stressed, can alleviate the behaviors.

“Traditionally there have been a lot of kids who were able to skate by and maintain at a level where they didn’t get flagged,” said Katy Chaffin, a special-education teacher in San Diego. “When you take years of school closure, for those kids, they’ve fallen so much farther behind.”

...

The 1970s-era federal law that created the special education system authorizes federal funding for up to 40% of the costs to provide the services, but the federal contribution has always fallen far short of that. Adjusted for inflation, regular federal funding for the law has fallen since 2010, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Education.

A separate legal avenue for children with disabilities is a 504 plan, which guarantees school accommodations like extra time on tests. The share of students receiving a 504 has risen from 1% in school year 2009-2010 to 3.3% in 2020-2021, according to an analysis of federal data by Perry Zirkel, an education law researcher.

MAGA Means "Measles Aren't Going Away"

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion. In Iowa, Nevada, Virginia, and Georgia, he has said:  "I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate."

Megan Messerly at Politico

Trump’s new anti-vaccine persona could have far-reaching consequences if he’s elected to a second stint as president with far-reaching administrative powers. Public health experts say a White House opposed to immunization mandates could potentially cause upticks in cases of measles, polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases, or hamper efforts to fight a future pandemic.

The CDC could pare back the number of vaccines it recommends children receive or eliminate those recommendations entirely. The CDC could change the paperwork required to be shared with parents to make vaccines sound less safe than they are. Or the FDA could increase the number of years of safety testing required for new vaccines and impose other onerous requirements for vaccines to be approved in the U.S.

Trump also could, as a thank-you to vaccine skeptics for their support in November, appoint someone who opposes the government’s traditional role in promoting vaccines, such as Kennedy or Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who called for a pause in the use of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines and did not encourage parents to vaccinate their children during a recent measles outbreak.

Autism, COVID, and Inequality

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families. Those challenges were especially tough during the pandemic.

Anderson, K.A., Radey, M., Rast, J.E. et al. The Economic Impacts of COVID-19 on Autistic Children and Their Families. J Autism Dev Disord (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-024-06280-y

Abstract

Purpose

We used data from the National Survey of Children’s Health to (1) examine differences in economic hardship and safety net program use after the implementation of federal relief efforts, and (2) assess whether the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated autism-based disparities in hardship and program use.

Methods

We examined five dimensions of economic hardship (poverty, food insecurity, medical hardship, medical costs, and foregone work) and four safety net programs (cash assistance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and free or reduced-cost meals). First, we calculated adjusted prevalence and odds ratios to compare pre-COVID (2018–2019) and during COVID (2021) outcomes by autism status. Next, we calculated the adjusted odds of each outcome among autistic children compared to those of children with and without other special healthcare needs at both time points.

Results

COVID-19 exacerbated autism-based disparities in food insecurity, SNAP, and public health insurance, but alleviated inequities in medical hardship, foregone work, and cash assistance. Autistic children did not experience declines in food insecurity or increases in SNAP like other children; medical hardship and foregone work decreased more for autistic children; and the magnitude of autism-based differences in public coverage significantly increased during the pandemic.
Conclusion

Federal relief efforts likely improved economic outcomes of children; however, these effects varied according to type of hardship and by disability group. Efforts to promote economic well-being among autistic populations should be tailored to the financial challenges most salient to low-income autistic children, like food insecurity.

Perceived Experts

 In The Politics of Autism, I write:

Many articles and blog posts arguing for the vaccine-autism link have the trappings of genuine academic research: tables, graphs, citations, and scientific jargon. Some of the authors have credentials such as M.D. or Ph.D. degrees. None of these things is a guarantee of scientific value, as the history of science is full of crackpot theories (e.g., AIDS denialism) that are the heavily-footnoted products of people with letters after their names. But most people will not be able to spot the scientific weaknesses of such work. Outside of academia, few understand concepts such as peer review. Jordynn Jack describes one dubious article that appeared in a non-peer-reviewed publication: “Regardless of the scientific validity of the article, though, the writers perform the writing style quite effectively. It would be difficult for the layperson to distinguish this article from any other scientific research paper, especially if one did not investigate the nature of the journal … or of the scientific response to the article.”

Mallory J Harris, Ryan Murtfeldt, Shufan Wang, Erin A Mordecai, Jevin D West, Perceived experts are prevalent and influential within an antivaccine community on Twitter, PNAS Nexus, Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2024, pgae007, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae007  Abstract:

Perceived experts (i.e. medical professionals and biomedical scientists) are trusted sources of medical information who are especially effective at encouraging vaccine uptake. The role of perceived experts acting as potential antivaccine influencers has not been characterized systematically. We describe the prevalence and importance of antivaccine perceived experts by constructing a coengagement network of 7,720 accounts based on a Twitter data set containing over 4.2 million posts from April 2021. The coengagement network primarily broke into two large communities that differed in their stance toward COVID-19 vaccines, and misinformation was predominantly shared by the antivaccine community. Perceived experts had a sizable presence across the coengagement network, including within the antivaccine community where they were 9.8% of individual, English-language users. Perceived experts within the antivaccine community shared low-quality (misinformation) sources at similar rates and academic sources at higher rates compared to perceived nonexperts in that community. Perceived experts occupied important network positions as central antivaccine users and bridges between the antivaccine and provaccine communities. Using propensity score matching, we found that perceived expertise brought an influence boost, as perceived experts were significantly more likely to receive likes and retweets in both the antivaccine and provaccine communities. There was no significant difference in the magnitude of the influence boost for perceived experts between the two communities. Social media platforms, scientific communications, and biomedical organizations may focus on more systemic interventions to reduce the impact of perceived experts in spreading antivaccine misinformation.

From the article:

Information consumers often use markers of credibility to assess different sources (25, 26). Specifically, prestige bias describes a heuristic where one preferentially learns from individuals who present signals associated with higher status (e.g. educational and professional credentials) (27–29). Importantly, prestige-biased learning relies on signifiers of expertise that may or may not be accurate or correspond with actual competence in a given domain (25, 30). Therefore, we will refer to perceived experts to denote individuals whose profiles contain signals that have been shown experimentally to increase the likelihood that an individual is viewed as an expert on COVID-19 vaccines (31), although credentials may be misrepresented or misunderstood (user profiles may be deceptive or ambiguous, audiences may not understand the domain specificity of expertise, and platform design may impair assessments of expertise if partial profile information is displayed alongside posts). We focus on the understudied role of perceived experts as potential antivaccine influencers who accrue influence through prestige bias (4, 13). Medical professionals, biomedical scientists, and organizations are trusted sources of medical information who may be especially effective at persuading people to get vaccinated and correcting misconceptions about disease and vaccines (29, 32–35), suggesting that prestige bias may apply to vaccination decisions, including for COVID-19 vaccines (36, 37).

...

In addition to signaling expertise in their profiles, perceived experts may behave like biomedical experts by making scientific arguments and sharing scientific links but also propagate misinformation by sharing unreliable sources. Antivaccine films frequently utilize medical imagery and emphasize the scientific authority of perceived experts who appear in the films (42, 43, 48). Although vaccine opponents reject scientific consensus, many still value the brand of science and engage with peer reviewed literature (49). Scientific articles are routinely shared by Twitter users who oppose vaccines and other public health measures (e.g. masks), but sources may be presented in a selective or misleading manner (40, 49–53). At the same time, misinformation claims from sources that often fail fact checks (i.e. low-quality sources) are pervasive within antivaccine communities, where they may exacerbate vaccine hesitancy (6, 18, 54, 55).

 

Science Communication

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

 Amy Maxmen at KHN:

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the scientific community must improve its communication. Expertise, alone, is insufficient when people mistrust the experts’ motives. Indeed, nearly 40% of Republicans report little to no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest.

In a study published last year, Jamieson and colleagues identified attributes the public values beyond expertise, including transparency about unknowns and self-correction. Researchers might have better managed expectations around covid vaccines, for example, by emphasizing that the protection conferred by most vaccines is less than 100% and wanes over time, requiring additional shots, Jamieson said. And when the initial covid vaccine trials demonstrated that the shots drastically curbed hospitalization and death but revealed little about infections, public health officials might have been more open about their uncertainty.

As a result, many people felt betrayed when covid vaccines only moderately reduced the risk of infection. “We were promised that the vaccine would stop transmission, only to find out that wasn’t completely true, and America noticed,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the Republican-led coronavirus subcommittee, at a July hearing.

Jamieson also advises repetition. It’s a technique expertly deployed by those who promote misinformation, which perhaps explains why the number of people who believe the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin treats covid more than doubled over the past two years — despite persistent evidence to the contrary. In November, the drug got another shoutout at a hearing where congressional Republicans alleged that the Biden administration and science agencies had censored public health information.

COVID Vaccination During Pregnancy

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Kate Yandell at FactCheck.org:

COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy benefits both mother and baby. Side effects are generally mild, and studies don’t show negative effects on the baby. A criticized study that gave COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant rats doesn’t show that vaccines cause autism or that people shouldn’t get COVID-19 vaccines, contrary to claims.

Nevertheless, a notorious crackpot keeps pushing the myth:

Commentator Candace Owens, who has a history of spreading misinformation, shared a post about the study on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, saying it supported long-standing, debunked claims about vaccines and autism. “That’s because vaccines and autism have always been linked, which affected mothers have been trying to tell the general public for decades,” she said. Posts about the study have continued to spread

. And last week, yet another punctured the myth:

Jaswa EG, Cedars MI, Lindquist KJ, et al. In Utero Exposure to Maternal COVID-19 Vaccination and Offspring Neurodevelopment at 12 and 18 Months. JAMA Pediatr. Published online January 22, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.5743.

Key Points

Question Is previous exposure to maternal COVID-19 vaccination in utero associated with increased risk for neurodevelopmental impairment in 12- and 18-month-old infants?

Findings In this cohort study including 2261 and 1940 infants aged 12 and 18 months, respectively, in utero exposure to COVID-19 vaccination was not associated with abnormal neurodevelopmental scores on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, third edition, at 12 or 18 months of life.

Meaning Results suggest that maternal vaccination against COVID-19 during pregnancy was safe from the perspective of offspring neurodevelopment up to age 18 months.