Are RSV vaccines related to poor birth outcomes?

This article begins with a claim that “[t]he incidence or prevalence of RSV is not known precisely because it poses no danger to anyone.” They cite this article to assert that only 17 infants die per year due to RSV.

However, this claim counts those deaths where RSV is a primary contributing cause and ignores RSV as an “underlying contributing cause of death.” The underlying cause on a death certificate is the very first thing that happened in the series of causal events leading to someone’s death. As such, RSV is still a cause of death.

The article cites Dr. Paul Offit and his purported concern about an increased risk of premature birth in the vaccinated participants and a decreased risk in the placebo group.

If you listen to Dr. Offit himself, however, he observes that the initial signal appeared only in lower- and middle-income countries. But in those places, the presence of an additional vaccine is not linked to an increase in prematurity rates in the vaccine group. Instead, there is a clear decrease in prematurity rates in the placebo group. Individuals in the placebo group were more likely to have received a COVID-19 or flu vaccine, reducing the risk of prematurity from those diseases.