TVE links prenatal COVID to cognitive harm, citing flawed CSIC study

The study behind TVE's headline: 3 fetuses, not thousands of children

A public broadcaster opens its news with an image that sticks: mothers who had ELbichito five years ago and children with cognitive issues. The headline works. The problem is what lies beneath. The segment relies on work by the Institute of Neurosciences of the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) whose experimental base is three fetuses from spontaneous abortions, donated anonymously. No cohort, no thousands of births, no five-year trinc-up. From there to "children of pregnant women who caught ELbichito have cognitive deficits" is a gap the TV station did not cross, nor did it flag.

What the CSIC study actually says

The CSIC's own press release states that transmission of ELbichito-19 to the fetus would affect brain development and memory. Conditional. Scientific caution. The news piece, however, keeps the noun and drops the verb. It is the classic mechanism: the paper nuances, the communications office simplifies, and the newscast finishes the job.

There is a mention of vaccines in the study that almost nobody cites. According to the collected data, cognitive delays fell in children of already vaccinated mothers, attributed to a lower viral load. That is, the work points in the opposite direction to what the headline suggests. Nobody said this on air.

The mask effect and other ignored variables

The conversation quickly shifted to what the study does not control. Lockdowns, schooling with masks at critical ages for language, social isolation in early years. Any of those factors could explain a delay in language development on their own without invoking anything else. Furthermore, the time series does not match: child cognitive deterioration has been observed well before 2020.

The underlying problem: without a control group, there is no comparison

Here is the most uncomfortable argument of all. If practically the entire population is vaccinated, the unvaccinated group against which to compare disappears. Without that contrast, any subsequent study on long-term effects is born flawed. This is not theory; it is basic experimental design. And it is why many of the papers now being published cannot close the question they open.

Data that does exist: excess infant mortality in the US

Outside the TV spotlight, analyses circulating do handle large volumes. A widely circulated study on CDC infant mortality records points to a 77% excess in deaths among children born to vaccinated mothers after the mass campaign. The figure comes from an analysis spread on social media and not independently verified; it is large enough to demand verification and uncomfortable enough that no one asked for it during prime time.

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TVE's headline did its job: it is remembered. The study supporting it, however, fits into a lab note. Between one thing and the other lie five years of silence on the questions no one wanted to ask when they could still be answered.