NBC gets it from all sides after reporting on Covid vaccine links to tinnitus

NBC News dared on Sunday to discuss a possible connection between the COVID-19 vaccine and tinnitus, but it seems the outlet’s warning is falling on deaf ears as readers from both ends of the political spectrum dragged the report on Twitter.

Tinnitus, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is defined as “the perception of sound that does not have an external source, so other people cannot hear it.”

It is “commonly described as a ringing sound, but some people hear other types of sounds, such as roaring or buzzing,” the NIDCD states, and it affects an estimated 10 to 25% of all adults.

After being vaccinated against COVID, NBC reports, thousands of people have said they’ve developed tinnitus, though, currently, there is no proof that the condition was caused by the jab.

Still, theories among researchers are emerging to explain the possible link.

One theory comes from Shaowen Bao, an associate professor in the physiology department of the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who is himself a longtime tinnitus sufferer and a representative of the American Tinnitus Association’s scientific advisory board.

Bao has spent more than a decade studying the disruptive ringing and says ongoing inflammation, especially in the brain or spinal cord, may be behind the possible side effect.

After studying 398 reported cases — many of them severe — Bao found that tinnitus developed after the first dose of the vaccine, suggesting “that the vaccine is interacting with pre-existing risk factors for tinnitus.”

“If you have the risk factor,” he said, “you will probably get it from the first dose.”

To date, more than 16,000 people complained to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that they were experiencing tinnitus after receiving a COVID shot, NBC reports, but after internal reviews, the CDC “did not find any data suggesting a link between Covid-19 vaccines and tinnitus,” according to an agency spokesperson.

Those reviews, however, were not made public.

Bao said that participants in his study also reported headaches, dizziness, vertigo, ear pain, anxiety, and depression. One participant said the noise in his head was so loud, he couldn’t hear his car radio.

Bao is still analyzing the results and his preliminary findings have not been published.

The founder and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Gregory Poland, knows first-hand about the potential side-effect.

Two years ago, after receiving his COVID vaccines, he developed tinnitus, and it is, at times, enough to make him “scream.”

“There are some days where I’m busy or haven’t been exposed too much in the way of noise, where it’s tolerable,” he said. “Other days, I could just scream.”

“You don’t ever get over tinnitus,” he added.

Poland, as presidential candidate and vocal anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. pointed out, has been speaking out about the possible connection for more than a year.

On Twitter, reactions to news of a possible link range from, essentially, “duh!” to angry dismissals.

“Hang on I gotta go put on my shocked face,” one user commented. “For real though, I never had this before the jab.”

“LOL. Where were you guys two years ago?” asked another. “Don’t answer it. Was a rhetorical question. We already know.”


But others, who seem to crave the COVID shots regardless of how many anecdotal incidents of injury they see, are blasting NBC for its “irresponsible” reporting.

“Unless you have the data to support this as fact, it’s irresponsible to be reporting this,” tweeted one user. “Seriously.”

“Hundreds of thousands of people develop tinnitus every year. Over a hundred million in the US were vaccinated,” another noted. “This reporting is wildly irresponsible.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the nation’s leading cardiologists and an outspoken critic of the COVID vaccines, acknowledged the “miserable problem” and offered a bit of hope for those who suffer from it.

“My clinical experience with #COVIDVACCINE induced tinnitus is that it slowly improves,” he recently tweeted. “Anecdotal favorable effects with Spike Support (Nattokinase). Very strong need for RCTs on promising therapeutic agents to ameliorate a miserable problem.”

 

Melissa Fine

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