Will You Get Vaccinated for Coronavirus (COVID-19)? Can It Make Tinnitus or Hyperacusis Worse?

I am really scared and worrying what to do on this.

To be honest in some ways I wish I hadn't seen this thread pop up in the sidebar as I was looking forward to getting the vaccine and had no idea that it would be linked to increase in tinnitus. I suppose sometimes ignorance is bliss.

I am really struggling to cope with my tinnitus since worsening middle of last year and it varies very much in tones, loudness, ear fullness etc. from day to day week to week nothing with it ever seems constant.

Now there seems to be a lot of people on this board reporting it made their tinnitus worse or gave them tinnitus. Looking at the official published stats and reports from both USA and UK it seems like its very rare case that this will happen, but looking on this board seems like it's 50-50 almost or even more in favour of it making tinnitus worse.

So what to do, take the jab and give yourself worsening tinnitus or don't have it, get COVID-19 and have tinnitus worsen anyway.

Logically I can tell myself that the chance of it getting worse is very slim. Chance of getting COVID-19 is I would expect quite high, and not having vaccine may mean cant do things in the future plus COVID-19 not going anywhere, so I told myself to get the vaccine. Now that the time is coming close (supposed to have it on Friday) I am just petrified.

I have a partner and 2 year old daughter and I don't want her to be without her daddy but I am struggling to cope as is, I hate this condition and living in fear every bloody day. A million things can make tinnitus worse, a cold, a loud unexpected noise, my daughters laugh or cry... COVID-19 vaccine, catching COVID-19.

What to do. Everytime I think I am getting somewhere in my coping something else comes up .

 

Here in Denmark AstraZeneca has been suspended for over a month after 2 died and some others are hospitalised. There are strong rumours we are about to be permanently stop using it now (press conference soon).

 

The protein delivery method is different between J&J and AstraZeneca, which use a nonreplicating viral vector, versus Moderna and Pfizer using lipid shells. This type of blood clot is not being seen with mRNA vaccines.

That would mean that thousands of people experienced blood clots but did not report it to their doctors, the V-Safe web site or VAERS. The VAERS data — which can be submitted by patients not just medical personnel — shows four reports of blood clots.

I find it skeptical that thousands of people are having blood clots post vaccination from one type of vaccine and doctors are not reporting it. Plus this particular type of blood clot is not very common and needs to be quickly treated.

I had to undergo testing to rule out a blood clot many years ago, and they looked at any and every possible contributing factor.

It sounds like these six cases happened at a rate outside the norm, which triggered further investigation. I’m not saying there are not more cases, but there are not thousands more.

Thank you for adding that. Does anyone know the number of blood clot reports total for AstraZeneca distribution in the world?

That seems a higher rate than J&J with 6 cases out of six million doses. Though there could be more cases that appear in the next week since vaccinations were happening the day before the FDA-required stop. These clots need to be treated differently, so hopefully doctors will be able to act quickly now that they are aware.

 

I think this is a bit of a stretch. They will be monitoring this situation very closely, which is why they have halted the J&J vaccine and restricted the AstraZeneca one. Experts analysed all the reported adverse effects on EudraVigilance (the EU drug safety database). These are the kind of cases where you'd expect those affected to be hospitalised, meaning it's highly unlikely that 6000 people would be missed. It would show up in the data.

A baseless opinion doesn't have any weight to it as there's no evidence to back it up. One can claim all kinds of things.

 

Do you happen to know if Moderna posted their findings related to tinnitus post vaccine? I haven't seen anything but curious to know if it's resolving for those people who received the Moderna vaccine.

I am on day 69. It's slightly better but it would be nice to know if it fully resolves. Another member posted it could take 6 months. Holding on to hope! Thank you.

 

Nah, if they admit to 6 it means it's 6 because this is an extremely rare blood clot and this is being monitored by multiple global medical agencies. The idea that it could be off, by, say, a factor of two is incredibly unlikely. The odds of it being off by a factor of 1000 is pure conspiracy theory territory.

The adenovirus vaccines appear to cause a unique and dangerous blood clotting phenomenon in some young women. The actual number of people impacted seriously is far lower than the number of people seriously adversely affected by corona even if we only compare J&J vaxxed people to each other.

It's probably good that the guidance was issued, because until we understand the demographic risk here we shouldn't be pushing these particular vaxx hard -- but it's also become a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. It's six cases. It's not 6000. People can believe otherwise, just as they can choose to believe that the earth is flat -- the neat thing about reality is that it just keeps happening in spite of what you may believe to the contrary

Ignoring the socially irresponsible aspects of this (unless you're planning on continuing to mask and isolate until you're vaxxed), we have much more than sufficient data to say "COVID-19 is a much more serious risk to the health of any human, regardless of their age, than any of the vaccines are". So, you can choose not to get vaccinated, but you are just choosing to put yourself at a higher risk and also put others at risk. Again, whether or not you believe this doesn't matter; we now have a dataset of millions of COVID-19 cases and millions of people being vaxxed. There's nothing to wonder about here, the data is there for anyone who wants to parse it.

My only complaint is that I need to wait another 3 weeks for Pfizer #1 and then 4 weeks after that before I feel fully vaccinated, then god knows how long until our kids can be...

 

They have not; it's certainly showing up in the adverse incident reports, but at very very low counts relative to total number of people vaxx'd, so I doubt if it's really on their radar, unfortunately.

This year's flu vaxx spiked the hell out of my tinnitus but it went back to baseline in 2-3 weeks, I certainly hope yours resolves, too.

The odds that any of the lipid carries of the mRNA are ototoxic are close to zero, so, if this did something to your ears, it was the spike protein itself or the immune response, so getting actual COVID-19 probably would have done the same thing to you and then some, unfortunately. We are seeing a very unusually high number of cases of SSHNL lately, and I (and many audiologists / ENTs) believe it's COVID-19 related hearing damage, even in the case of "asymptomatic" infections. URIs are bad for your ears and COVID-19 appears to be especially so.

Also to be clear I 100% believe some small percentage of people have developed or discovered new tinnitus as a result of the various vaccines. The problem with running too far with that thinking is we're talking about some sub-1% number, compared to a much larger number of people who report audiological effects of COVID-19.

As long as the virus is globally endemic the risk to your ears of not being vaccinated will be greater than the risk to your ears of any of the vaccines, unless you're willing to mask and completely isolate from society for the 2-3 years I expect it to take for this to not be endemic...

 

I was going to use that term but decided against it as I figured I’d said it too many times already.

 

The increasing data suggesting a direct link between COVID-19 and hearing damage is concerning. There’s a lot of talk about longterm COVID-19 suffers dealing with neurological side effects, and I wonder if tinnitus is being grouped into that category too. I think I recall one study found a 15 percent risk of auditory damage while another said 40 percent of individuals with tinnitus experienced it worsening after COVID-19.

None of the vaccines are causing 40 percent of tinnitus sufferers to experience an increase. Out of the VAERS data, the reports of worsening pre-existing tinnitus are very low. If it’s happening, I would hope people would report it.

Considering the risk levels, it feels a bit like we’re worrying about the cat sitting next to our path and ignoring the lion lurking behind us.

 

Yes, I agree 100%, and as I have said before, I think it comes down to agency. If we get a vaccine and it causes us problems we feel like we made an incorrect choice. If we're exposed to COVID-19 and it causes us problems we feel like we were victims of a circumstance.

If the Pfizer vaxx does anything at all to my preexisting tinnitus, temporary or not, you can bet your nicest pair of boots that I will report it to VAERS

I can appreciate that view; to me, a spade is a spade, no matter how many times the card is picked up and then put down in front of me

 

This is brilliantly put, and is exactly right. There is also an agenda against vaccinations; it is almost as if people think there's an evil scientist somewhere, stroking a cat, and plotting to kill as many people as possible whilst evilly laughing to himself.

 

Great work, I love data. What might be even better is to convert the y-axis to percentages and change the style to a stacked bar graph. Eyeballing your graph shows a total of ~35 data points for Moderna and 45 for Pfizer. Which means that 8/35 (22.9%) are showing permanent / lasting symptoms for Moderna but only 3/45 (6.7%) for Pfizer. This would be much more obvious if percentages were used.

Once again, great analysis. I hope people continue to post updates so we can classify them more accurately over time.

 

Can you share what happened after your 2nd dose? Cheers!

 

If it does anything to your preexisting tinnitus, will you continue to get the boosters that are likely to be required?

 

It would depend a lot on what "anything" is, I would assume? If it was a transient spike similar to what I got from this year's flu vaxx, sure, I'd get the second booster. Immunologic drugs tend to have some impact in my tinnitus.

If it was something more severe I'd have to go with my gut, but -- based on the data from this forum, even for a self-selected group of people that are super fixated on tinnitus, the number of people reporting zero impact or an obviously transient change, significantly outnumber people with more serious concerns.

I'm somewhat concerned about getting this vaxx, I am just very very concerned about myself or god forbid kids getting shafted with long COVID-19.

 

@linearb -- My understanding--and I could be wrong--is that the viral load has a lot to do with whether or not someone ends up with long COVID-19. I recently perused an article where they've apparently discovered high levels of the virus in saliva, perhaps accounting for people's loss of taste and smell.

I suspect those that get tinnitus end up with high viral levels in their ears. I have to think doing things that keep viral levels as low as possible will go a long way toward avoiding a long COVID-19 situation. Using natural antivirals for the ears and sinuses would make a lot of sense to me, especially since these appear to be the main entry points for the virus.

 

I have heard that the severity of symptoms depends on the viral load, too, and that someone with a higher viral load would experience more symptoms. Yet there are cases of individuals who had mild symptoms or were asymptomatic experiencing longterm COVID-19. Unfortunately, I have heard of this happening to children who tested COVID-19-positive, had no symptoms but months later developing severe asthma or MIS-C. Or there are the reports of asymptomatic individuals experiencing SSHL.

There’s just so much we do not know. Seems like every one thing we learn raises a hundred new questions or angles to consider.

What antivirals do you recommend for ears?

I feel like this is good information for even in non-COVID-19 times.

 

The thing that immediately jumps to mind is something like a neti wash with Xylitol (something I used to do pretty regularly during cold season when I lived in an urban area). What else is on your radar in this regard?

 

If you go do a Twitter search for "COVID-19 tinnitus" it's pretty informative.

Very, very few people talking about vaccines. Lots of people talking about being stuck with tinnitus as the result of a COVID-19 infection, in many cases months later.

Searching "Pfizer tinnitus" finds more, but, digging through it it's drops in the bucket compared to the COVID-19 search. Of course this is extremely anecdotal.

 

They are still pushing AstraZeneca into arms here. I think because they have invested so much money into it.

 

I think it can difficult to know what’s truly going on since both Twitter and Facebook have explicit policies of deleting posts they view as spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines.

I am an admin for several private Facebook groups for tinnitus and hyperacusis. There have been some posts in these groups about people’s experiences with the COVID-19 vaccines. Some of those posts remain posted, but Facebook has deleted others without any warning. In my opinion, the posts Facebook has deleted have been deleted unfairly. They are from people I have known a long time and I do not feel are sharing false information about their experiences with the vaccines.

Twitter I do not follow as carefully but, like Facebook, they have a stated policy which could result in deletion of posts about vaccine adverse side effects which they feel are not proven and documented.

“Twitter said Wednesday that it will begin removing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations from its site. It listed among posts that will removed as those including... debunked claims about the effects of receiving the vaccine.”

Twitter to start removing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

I fully appreciate the importance of not spreading mis-information, but these deletions of posts I feel to be honest reports of individual experiences also concerns me deeply.

And, it reminds me of the importance and value of a forum such as Tinnitus Talk which does not have a policy of deleting posts about adverse effects of the vaccines on tinnitus. It is one of the few places on the internet to find posts of anecdotes about the vaccines and tinnitus that have not been curated / censored by reviewers.

 

Many things are always on my radar, but most recently, ozone therapies--which have been on my radar for many years--have become more urgent for me in the age of COVID-19. Ozone is strongly antiviral, and can be used in a variety of ways.

Ozone as a gas is often "insufflated" into the ears. It can be bubbled into water, held in the mouth (apparently strongly anticavity), and then swallowed. Many holistic dentists use it in their practice to help clear up oral infections of all kinds, including festering infections from root canals (which I strongly suspect is the cause of tinnitus for many people with idopathic tinnitus).

It can also be used in a variety of ways in the form of ozonated olive oil, which by the way was originally formulated by Nikola Tesla. Interestinly, Tesla, upon hearing of the remarkable medical benefits of ozone, became the first person to start a business that sold them to the public (around 1906). A publication came out in around 1911 which expounded on the benefits of medical ozone, including some reporting about its effect on tinnitus. Still haven't gotten around to checking out that publication.

I've mentioned my interest in ozone in a few of my recent posts. They have links which will take you to a variety of information, much of which I think has either direct or indirect relevance to COVID-19, and even tinnitus issues. Here are a couple of those posts:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/posts/582621/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/posts/582007/

@lymebite -- Excellent post; thanks for taking the time to share your insights with us. I have ongoing serious concerns about the extraordinary censorship you mention.

 

But they aren't making much money out of it (it's mostly at cost). I don't think that is their motivation when it comes to vaccinating people. Pfizer, on the other hand, would likely vaccinate the walls if they could.

I don't think they'd push this if they thought there was a high risk of killing people. That's getting into conspiracy territory again.

 

The censorship is ridiculous on some of those platforms. It's just a shame they can't censor some of the hate as it is rife.

 

It's political. The government has put all our eggs in one basket.

 

What I don't understand is they paused J&J after 6 blood clots were reported, right? But in the VAERS data, there were like 20 blood clot entries for Pfizer and Moderna. So why didn't they pause for them?

 

These six blood clots are of a very specific and rare type, so even though the overall incidence of "blood clots" here is well below population averages, the incidence of this very specific, severe kind of clot, at 6 cases per million, is well above population norms. Additionally all these cases occurred in young women, implying that there may be a demographic of people with specific risks that need to be understood.

Also we haven't actually paused anything, CDC put out non binding guidance. Many states responded by cancelling appointments but that is politically "easy" here because the US is relatively drowning in vaccines compared to most of the rest of the world...

 

More news of side effects. Side effects, blood clots and worse... on and on...

Side effect of Moderna vaccine may be a delayed skin rash, doctors warn

This is way worse than the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 'causing' or "worsening' tinnitus. These vaccines' consequences are facts and the evidence is obvious and more subsequent info keeps arriving.

Everyone knows these vaccines are experimental and idiots who mock talk of conspiracies regarding them look more stupid all the time.

 

• Selenium is an essential factor and trace element and is a component of more than two dozen proteins. It influences viral pathways, helping to reduce severe symptoms of viral infections such as SARS, coxsackievirus, Ebola and HIV-1
• Data demonstrate there is a positive relationship between the survival rate for people with active COVID-19 infections and selenium levels

 

Wish I had thought to visit TT before having the Pfizer vaccine last week. Tinnitus volume gone through the roof 3 days after having it.

I just can't believe I've not seen anything on the tv news about the vaccine worsening T in the last few months. Yet doing a quick internet search this morning I found article after article mentioning it with numerous comments from people saying they either had T for the first time or their T had worsened after vaccination. Reported to Yellow Card and hoping it's a spike rather than permanent increase.