See the Vaccination Rates for (almost) All SCV Childcare Centers

Childcare centers are a special concern because many include children too young to get some vaccines. If the older kids don’t have their vaccines, and their older siblings don’t have theirs, it’s easy to see how a disease like measles could spread quickly.

Those who are either too young or medically unable to get vaccinated depend on everyone else to get vaccinated in order to keep certain diseases away. If too many kids aren’t immunized, then it makes it much more likely that one infected child will come into contact with another infected child, and so on, and so on.

For diseases like measles, herd immunity is compromised when more than 8% aren’t vaccinated. This video explains the concept of herd immunity quite well.

In the table below you can see how many kids are either not up to date at the time of the report as well as how many are exempt, either because their parents refuse or a medical condition means they can’t. A law took effect last year that makes personal belief exemptions a little harder to come by. Parents must now get a note from a medical professional that says they’ve been advised of the risk of skipping vaccinations. There is still a religious exemption, but it’s only supposed those where it’s against their religion to go to a doctor, period. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the only religion in the U.S. that holds such a belief are Christian Scientists, which is a tiny (and dwindling) sect.

If a school shows an unusually high number of medical and/or religious exemptions, there’s a good chance they and/or their families are not following the letter of the law. As you can see below, the statewide average for each of those exemptions are quite low.

Due to space constraints, I’m only listing the up-to-date and exemption rates. If you’re concerned about a particular facility, you can follow this link (PDF - big) for data on each particular vaccine. For example, a school might not have all their paperwork in order so their up-to-date percentage might be low, but their, say, MMR vaccination rate might be high.

There are several schools in the valley that did not report this year. Some, like Pinecrest, are closed. Others did not appear on last year’s list at all, a few didn’t report last year, and a few did. Of those who reported last time but not this time, only Shooting Stars in Stevenson Ranch had a low compliance rate. In fact, Shooting Stars had the lowest up-to-date percentage in SCV in the previous report. Here are the schools that didn’t report:

And now for the schools that did report. Here’s a quick decoding of the categories.

Up-To-Date: Kids with all the vaccinations required by law according to their age. (Statewide average: 89.4%, SCV: 88.3%)

Conditional: Kids who don't have all the required vaccinations (or proof of such) at the time of the report, but do not have an exemption. Facilities/schools are supposed to hound and/or exclude such kids until they get their shots/records in order. This number is the most likely to improve over the year. (Statewide average: 7.4%, SCV: 7.5%)

Permanent Medical Exemption: Kids who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons. These are the kids who really depend on everyone else to be vaccinated (see:herd immunity). (Statewide average: 0.6%, SCV: 0.7%)