Viruses and Vaccines can contribute to hearing loss and tinnitus

Very Well Health ^ | April 22, 2022 | Deaf and Delirious

[Deaf and Discerning]

Based on my penname "Deaf and Delirious", most readers will probably - and correctly - assume I am hearing impaired. I've been wearing hearing aids since my teenage years. My hearing loss ranges between 80 - 90 dB bilaterally (both ears) and described as "severe hearing loss" level. At this level, without my hearing aids, I cannot hear speech at all when a person is talking to me at a normal level (60 B). But I can hear some loud sounds, like my lawn mower (90 dB) or my circular saw (100 dB). I also experience tinnitus daily.

When someone is subjected to any virus (flu or Covid), the individual suffers from certain symptoms. These symptoms vary depending on the individual, severity, and other issues. But we see many articles that one can suffer side effects from the Covid vaccines themselves. So I ask myself: "If someone has Covid, did he get it from someone else spreading it, or from being vaccinated, or both?". Naturally, I was curious if either viruses or vaccines can impair one's hearing abilities and/or cause tinnitus. Here are some quotes I found:

Hearing Loss from Viral Infections and/or Vaccines

https://www.verywellhealth.com/hearing-loss-tinnitus-symptoms-covid-19-5076221#citation-4 --- "Many COVID-19 patients report hearing loss and tinnitus as a late-onset symptom. Hearing issues may be caused by COVID-19 itself, the medications used to treat it, or the stress surrounding the illness." (Oct 6, 2020)

Hearing Loss from Viral Infections

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4222184/ --- "A number of viral infections can cause hearing loss. Hearing loss induced by these viruses can be congenital or acquired, unilateral or bilateral." (Jul 22, 2014)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14992027.2020.1776406 --- "It is well known that some viral infections may cause hearing loss. For instance, sequelae of cytomegalovirus, rubella and measles can be sensorineural hearing loss". (Jun 12, 2020)

https://www.healthyhearing.com/report/53127-Coronavirus-hearing-loss-tinnitus-covid? --- "There are increasing anecdotal reports that the Delta variant is more likely to cause earaches than other mutations of the virus. This is likely because Delta causes more upper respiratory symptoms, doctors say, putting more pressure on the ears and potentially causing ear infections." (Aug, 2021)

Hearing Loss from Medications and Vaccines

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27026733/ --- "Case reports of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) following vaccines have led to concerns that vaccines may rarely cause hearing loss." (Mar 29, 2016)

https://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Ototoxic-Medications/ --- "Certain medications can damage the ear, resulting in hearing loss, ringing in the ear, or balance disorders. These drugs are considered ototoxic. There are more than 200 known ototoxic medications (prescription and over-the-counter) on the market today. These include medicines used to treat serious infections, cancer, and heart disease." (2020)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninashapiro/2021/05/23/study-looks-at-link-between-covid-19-vaccine-and-sudden-hearing-loss/? --- "JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery assessed the incidence of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL, or “nerve deafness”) associated with recent receipt of one of the two mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines between December 14, 2020 and March 2, 2021." (May 23, 2021)

https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2019/avoiding-serious-flu-complications.html? --- One reader's comment: "Flu shot ..66% hearing loss in BOTH EARS 3 wks after shot and need hearing aids. Nerve damage cannot be repaired. Woke up with pressure in both ears so went to have wax removed to find out that I have NERVE DAMAGE. Checked side effects of flu vaccine and sure enough loss of hearing (is one of them). You don't get this info until after vaccine." (Dec 2, 2021)

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article260210665.html --- "A total 164 cases of hearing loss and 367 cases of tinnitus from across the globe, including from the U.S., were reported by Feb. 22, 2021, just a few months after the vaccines started rolling out in the U.S., the WHO said. On average, the hearing issues occurred one day after a COVID-19 shot was administered." (Apr 07, 2022)

[Deaf and Discerning]

The excessive number of references under the 3rd section "Medications and Vaccines" does not mean I am deliberately emphasizing these issues. This is coincidental - I got tired of searching for additional references for the first two sections...

D&D

[Deaf and Discerning]

Somehow, I messed up the links in html..

[Deaf Smith]

Meh.

[fireman15]

Somehow, I messed up the links in html..

Good links... I think that I got them all fixed for you.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/hearing-loss-tinnitus-symptoms-covid-19-5076221#citation-4

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4222184/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14992027.2020.1776406

https://www.healthyhearing.com/report/53127-Coronavirus-hearing-loss-tinnitus-covid

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27026733/

https://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Ototoxic-Medications/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninashapiro/2021/05/23/study-looks-at-link-between-covid-19-vaccine-and-sudden-hearing-loss/

https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2019/avoiding-serious-flu-complications.html

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article260210665.html

[fireman15]

I have got hearing loss and tinnitus as well, but not as severe as yours. Mine came from riding around in old fire engines and ladder trucks for years with no nearing protection. The problems are worse in right ear because when I was riding in the back, I was outside, facing the back of the vehicle and the engine was on my right. When I was driving the engine was also on my right. I was starting to have problems by the time I became an officer and started wearing hearing protection, so my left ear is in much better condition. In my case the tinnitus is typically more annoying than the hearing loss.

[Deaf and Discerning]

Using HTML, how the heck did you fix the links?

[fireman15]

I use a trick...

I noticed that the text of your links were all fine when cut and pasted into an address bar.

All you have to do to avoid using html is paste the raw links from the sites you want to share without any html into a reply box. If you include any html the trick will not work. Be sure and hit the enter button after each of them. Then type a misspelled nonsense word at the end of your post. Do a spell check with the spell button, hit the “apply correction box”. The corrected text you get back will have proper html applied by the brilliant editor built into the Free Republic website. Then just go back and delete the misspelled nonsense word.

Hope that my explanation is decipherable. Give it a try. If not I will try to do a better job of explaining how it works. It saves a lot of time.

[fireman15]

Oh, after Free Republic’s editor does the heavy lifting on your links you can go back and add html for italicizing, bolding and changing the size of text, along with other html for pictures, tables, etc...

[norwaypinesavage]

That’s a neat trick, thanks. I knew about the first part, but I was unaware that the spell checker would add html.

[fireman15]

It is easy to write out hyperlinks anyway, but using the shortcut saves a little time and eliminates inadvertent errors like the OP had which were causing him some difficulty.

I do not know if this will be helpful, but the other shortcut that I often use to add a pictures found in links being shared to my post, is to right click on the picture that I would like included and then go to “inspect” in the box that shows up and copy the highlighted html for the picture then paste it into the post.

Typically, I also resize by using width=480 or whatever is preferred just before the final > in the html which has been pasted. Sometimes the graphic will have a bunch of nonsense characters in the html that makes this technique unusable if whatever organization or person has posted it originally does not want it copied in this way. It is best to just forget it at that point even though there are easy ways around this. You also need to remember to do this after you have converted to html using the spell check on Free Republic otherwise you will have to manually go through your post and add all the paragraph breaks.

My most often used reference for HTML is

https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp

[fireman15]

My tinnitus has really been acting up this morning in both ears. This usually means that I am stressed, didn’t sleep well, or ate too much sugar before I went to bed.