A respected reader noted
this article at Wired which measured the vaccine rates of parents who leave their children at Silicon Valley region company-run day care centers.
I tend to think this is a proxy for some other socioeconomic indicator, but I dunno. Thoughts?
Smart people can convince themselves of stupid ideas. Do a bit of research on the internet and convince themselves that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they inoculate against. Also I imagine peer pressure contributes. Everyone trying to raise a kid more 'naturally.'
ReplyDeleteKids raised naturally includes kids killed or handicapped for life by polio. I'm old enough to remember when the Salk vaccine came out and remember some of the neighborhood kids who were handicapped.
DeleteI guess they'll just find out for themselves and then let them try to figure out who they can sue for their own ignorance.
To the left, we have hardware and science. To the right, we have fantasy and bits.
ReplyDeleteThe x-axis might as well be labeled "Divorcement from reality."
The non vaccinate demographic seems to be educated/wealthy non life science - so not a suprise to see Google, IBM and Pixar (creatives). The outlier to me is possibly Oracle, sitting with the lifescience org's - who really should have high vaccination rates. (Note - I don't have data to support this personal observation of course).
ReplyDeleteAnother factor is possibly that you are only looking at the company where one parent works. Slate recently had an article (http://goo.gl/lA6ajy) that discussed how almost all vaccination decisions are made by the mother. I'm assuming that Oracle, IBM, Google are fairly male dominated - but the demographic info would be an interesting overlay perhaps?
the data were from the daycare centers, so I'm assuming both parents work for most of these kids. however, we have no data if both parents work there. Still, the harware + science/software + internet divide is striking
DeleteI did not know California had such relaxed laws. This is the first time I have ever heard that you could take your child to a daycare without the child having received vaccinations. Most daycares make up to date vaccinations a requirement in order to keep your child enrolled.
ReplyDeleteI hear that vaccines have glutens that were GMO'd by Monsanto. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take my 10-year-old son around the mall and breast feed him until I get kicked out so I can raise a stink about it. Stop trying to hate-crime my family!
ReplyDeleteCan he stand up while breast-feeding or is he too tall?
DeleteWell, the wide variability between the two Google facilities and the two Cisco facilities makes me wonder if we can treat anti-vaccine attitudes as an infectious disease itself.
ReplyDeleteIrresponsibility (aka "social stupidity") is definitely contagious. Smarts need to be inoculated, unfortunately.
DeleteMy brother has a MS in computer science, and although he is reasonably intelligent, his understanding of anything medical or biological is abysmal. He gets upset when he has bloodwork and they find a thyroid hormone level that is just outside of the 95 percentile; he's convinced he must have some awful condition. He thinks that any experimental surgical procedure or medical treatment is better than whatever the current established surgical procedure or treatment is for a condition, similar to the way people feel that today's iPhone 6 is better than yesterday's iPhone 5. I have not been able to convince him that 'experimental' does not always mean 'better'. In the long run, 'experimental' can also turn out to be 'no better' or even 'worse'. For a while there he was convinced my mother got breast cancer because she ate too much high fat food (perhaps a contributing factor, but certainly not the main reason for her disease). And on and on. However, I do believe his kids were all vaccinated.
ReplyDeleteI imagine the concentration of high tech types in Silicon Valley helps to reinforce the lax attitude towards vaccines. The irony is that a lot of these vaccine-adverse parents are depending on other parents getting their kids vaccinated, so there will be enough herd immunity. However, as the above bar graphs show, if enough parents have these lax attitudes, the herd immunity is compromised.
I know a few programmers like this. It should be noted that some people pick up programming on their own and don't necessarily have a CS degree. A lot come over from science or engineering, but some don't. In the latter case, their grasp of the scientific method and statistics may be pretty sketchy, as is their understanding that correlation does not necessarily equal causation. One of them doesn't like to go to the dentist or doctor, and makes up complicated reasons why he doesn't need to go. Then of course, he lets things go too long and has to get root canals instead of regular fillings, so of course he waits even longer the next time.
Delete"socioeconomic indicator"
ReplyDeleteThis could be a couple things....
Proximity to retarded movie/pop stars who distrust all 'non-natural' things or the "religions" movie stars peddle.
Distrust of government or pharma.
Busy computer scientists who think their kids are immortal like comic book heros?
Proximity to lawsuit hungry lawyers who advertise risks of vaccines real and imagined?
As an industrial chemist who has to deal with CARB / California regulations, which are strongly influenced by the "Proximity to retarded movie/pop stars who distrust all 'non-natural' things" that the above commenter points out, this doesn't surprise me one bit.
ReplyDelete