SCV Talk · Archive
Nine years of the Valley’s town square · 2006–2015
SCV Talk
September 10, 2014· santaclarita.com · SantaClarita.com (SCVTalk 5.0) · Wayback capture

Parents Refusing to Vaccinate at Dangerously High Levels at Five SCV Schools

By Mike Devlin

Last year, five elementary schools in the SCV reported what experts consider dangerously high rates of parents opting out of vaccines, according to a report last week by the LA Times. Here's a snapshot of the SCV – orange is bad (no herd immunity), dark grey is OK, and light grey is higher than the state average, but below the point where herd immunity is lost (full interactive map and list here).
Image not recoveredvaccine map.png
Schools require students to get certain vaccinations, but parents can claim exemptions based on personal beliefs. These exemptions have doubled in the last six years to a statewide average of 2.9% for public schools and 5.7% for private schools. The spike is thought to be driven by widely-refuted concern that early childhood vaccines cause Autism.
According to the LA Times, herd immunity for measles and whooping cough is threatened when over 8% of parents refuse to vaccinate their kids. Five SCV schools fall below the herd immunity threshold for these diseases: three in the Sulphur Springs district, one in the Saugus district and one Hart-chartered school.
SchoolDistrictExemption Rate
Valley ViewSulphur Springs17.3%
CedarcreekSaugus16.5%
PinetreeSulphur Springs15.2%
Canyon SpringsSulphur Springs12.3%
SCViHart (Charter)12.0%
The figures for these schools are pretty alarming, and they don't even take into account the percentage of kindergartners who aren't up-to-date on their vaccines. Declining vaccination rates have been blamed for recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough.
Apart from the obvious risk to their own children, the decline in vaccinations it threatens the "herd immunity." The herd immunity is when nearly everyone in a group is vaccinated, and it prevents outbreaks from occuring. Without it, there is a much higher risk of infection for unvaccinated schoolchildren, younger children, the elderly and anyone with compromised immune systems. This video explains it really well.

An embedded YouTube video appeared here in the original post. View the original — embeds are preserved as links in this archive.


Comments (14)

  1. PhilomenaWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 8:30 am
    I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was great. I don't know who you are but certainly you are going to a famous blogger if you aren't already ;) Cheers!
  2. IHeartSCVWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 8:41 am
    Do you remember the days when people used to discuss SCVTalk briefs/stories in the comment section below the story? (or in the forums?). Over 60 comments--multiple comments posted per minute--on the Santa Clarita Community FB group where you linked to this story, and all this comments section got was a spamment and a meta-comment from yours truly. Sigh. Hopefully they read what you wrote--a very pertinent discovery/discussion.
  3. TimBen BoydstonWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 9:47 am
    Another great post by Mike Devlin. Although SCVTalk used to be the place for debate and comment and I enjoyed the sometimes entertaining posts, I like the facebook platform for discourse better for one reason. Posts have to be accompanied by real names. Yes it is possible to create fake people "sock puppets" but they are found and removed from the discourse. As an individual who has always posted under my own full name, I find that most people (myself included) are more thoughtful and less prone to extremism when they have to own their words.
  4. IHeartSCVWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 10:16 am
    Obviously, I've never been bothered by the notion of anonymity (though I too always post under my full first and last name--I Heart SCV--never a nickname like IHrt). It's pretty easy to tell from writing style if someone is just posting under different names, and if an anonymous person makes a valid argument, who cares if we don't know their real name? In any case, I was just longing for the past, as I often do.
  5. MikeWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 10:22 am
    I don't have the link, but I read a study a couple of years ago that actually found the SCVTalk model was the best for open discussion: not fully anonymous, but where people used the same name consistently - real names or not. Some people use quasi-anonymity to attack, but others have different reasons, and they wouldn't participate otherwise. But of course, it is more civil on facebook, which I like. It's also less interesting, which is too bad. It involves more people in the conversation, but I also feel that I learn less from the conversation. A few years back, the comments here were often "the best part," but I never took that as a put-down (and I don't think anyone else did, either) For what it's worth, our readership is up, and the bigger stories spike like we wouldn't have imagined a few years ago. But oh man, I used to be so tough on you in those comment threads, TimBen. I've come around, quite a bit ;)
  6. timothymyers02Wednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 9:54 am
    The Myers Clan is so PRO-vaccine that we had our youngest SON take the gardisal vaccination!
  7. VickiWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 10:20 am
    I would be interested in knowing if these numbers are differentiated between the medical waivers and the personal belief waivers, or if they are all just lumped together. Also, I wonder if the numbers take into consideration all the kids who started getting all their vaccines, then had negative reactions, so then stopped getting them and used the waivers when registering for school. If all we have is the data on the number of waivers, we don't know what led to the waiver. To assume that all of these families have waived vaccines from birth might be inaccurate, and, therefore, exaggerated. For example, in our family, we vaccinated our kids for the first few years as required, but when they each had bad reactions, we stopped. One has a medical waiver based on the contraindications on the product insert (ie, a past bad reaction means the doctor shouldn't give the booster), and one has a personal belief waiver on file (but would qualify for a medical waiver if we needed one). Interestingly, when we registered the child with the medical waiver for school, they made me sign the personal belief waiver anyway. I think these waiver numbers don't tell the whole story.
  8. MikeWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 10:27 am
    According to the article, the figures are strictly the personal belief exemption, and it mentions that medical exemptions exist as well. There's also the issue of children not being up to date, which is an issue in poor communities. They only survey Kindergarten and 7th grade, but I wonder if the up-to-date figure (*shockingly* low at some schools) is a persistent problem in 1st grade, 2nd grade, etc.
  9. VickiWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 11:00 am
    I was under the impression that, in order to start K, you either HAD to be up-to-date, or you had to have a waiver. Can a child go to school anyway, without up-to-date vaccines and without a waiver?
  10. Michelle BautistaWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 7:42 pm
    In a word, you are correct. They are "required" to present the vaccination list;however, at Valley View, the office staff is so incompetent that they allow the child to enter school without the required documentation of vaccines AND/OR they do not get the parents to sign the waiver. Also, I have dealt with the front office personnel. They can't read an up-to-date vaccination sheet if their job depended on it.
  11. IHeartSCVWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 10:30 am
    I think those are valid points, Vicki, but if exemption rate is the metric epidemiologists, etc. use in their calculations of critical thresholds, it's the number we should be using too. It's not critical that the number is absolutely accurate, it's critical that it's an effective index for when an area is at risk for an outbreak. As with any statistical measure, there's noise--people who got a waiver but vaccinated anyways, clerical errors, and so on--but this noise was also present in the systems people studied to generate numbers that guide the development of ideas like herd immunity. Basically, it's the best number we have to work with, and it's probably good enough to draw some general conclusions from.
  12. NateWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 11:11 am
    Sooooo stay away from Canyon Country and Castaic... Got it!
  13. Lori RivasWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 1:29 pm
    Two things: From my 14 years experience with the SCV homeschool community, I think our area draws/breeds/produces quite a few fringe kids and parents, medically, emotionally and psychologically speaking. And I don't mean this is a bad way, because fringe people make life interesting, challenge assumptions, and push the group as a whole to grow and change. I am confident that this is a factor in the non-vax stats, which, BTW, do not take into account homeschool children not enrolled through a local, public charter school. Second, there was an interesting article in Sunday's LA Times about Dr. Bob Sears, who is seen as a leader of anti-vax movement, but I think that label is misleading. What Dr. Bob says in the article, and how I have always understood his and his dad's stance, is that parents do have a choice, and by offering, for example, alternative vax schedules, or selective vax, then parents who might otherwise shun all vax will then chose at least some vax, or a slower paced vax schedule.
  14. Lori RivasWednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 1:32 pm
    http://www.latimes.com/local/orangecounty/la-me-adv-vaccines-doctor-bob-20140907-story.html#page=1

Preserved as part of the SCV Talk Archive. Text is presented as originally published; presentation has been standardised for readability. The original capture is available at the Internet Archive.

Support