Wealthy L.A. Schools' Vaccination Rates Are as Low as South Sudan's

[jimmy olsen]

Disgusting. They should be forced to live with the Amish until they decide to enter the 19th century.

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Wealthy L.A. Schools' Vaccination Rates Are as Low as South Sudan's
Hollywood parents say not vaccinating makes "instinctive" sense. Now their kids have whooping cough.

Olga Khazan Sep 16 2014, 9:00 AM ET

When actors play doctors on TV, that does not make them actual doctors. And that does not mean they should scour some Internet boards, confront their pediatricians, and demand fewer vaccinations for their children, as some Hollywood parents in Los Angeles have apparently been doing.

The Hollywood Reporter has a great investigation for which it sought the vaccination records of elementary schools all over Los Angeles County. They found that vaccination rates in elite neighborhoods like Santa Monica and Beverly Hills have tanked, and the incidence of whooping cough there has skyrocketed.

Here's a map of the schools with dangerously low vaccination rates (an interactive version is on their site). Note how the schools cluster together as little red dots all over the wealthy, crazy Westside—not unlike crimson spots on a measles patient:

Parents in these schools are submitting a form called a "personal belief exemption," which states that they are not vaccinating their kids due to "a diffuse constellation of unproven anxieties, from allergies and asthma to eczema and seizures," reporter Gary Baum writes.

In some schools, up to 60 to 70 percent of parents have filed these PBEs, indicating a vaccination rate as low as that of Chad or South Sudan. Unlike in Santa Monica, however, parents in South Sudan have trouble getting their children vaccinated because of an ongoing civil war.

And lo, it is these very same L.A. neighborhoods that are experiencing a resurgence of diseases like whooping cough, otherwise known as pertussis. Measles cases have also hit a high in California this year.

To be clear, not all PBEs are evidence of an anti-vaxxer parent. Schools require either a PBE or an up-to-date shot record for school attendance, and sometimes parents submit them if they simply aren't able to get the shots done on time. Still, the L.A. Times has previously reported that the percentage of kindergartens in which at least 8 percent of students were not fully vaccinated because of the parent's beliefs had more than doubled since 2007, and private-school parents were likelier to file the PBEs than their public-school counterparts. The paper found that the exemption rate for all of Santa Monica and Malibu was 15 percent.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed several Westside doctors who seem to encourage this kind of vaccine roulette, as well as several area school administrators who seem only vaguely aware of the risk.

"I'd prefer that children be immunized," Shari Latta, director of Children's Creative Workshop in Malibu, told THR. "We've been fortunate to avoid any outbreaks."

So fortunate! If only there were something parents could do to improve those fortunes ... a way to, say, inoculate their families against the tragedy of untreatable disease.

The anti-vaxxer turn is a frustrating development for a city that's obsessed with health and fitness. There are very few things that we know prevent sickness without a doubt. The "Beaming" juice at L.A.'s Cafe Gratitude, which consists of carrot juice, camu-camu, and astralagus, and which is surely delicious and beam-inducing, is not one. Vaccines are.

It's tempting to suggest, as some of Baum's L.A. sources do, that these are just concerned, well-meaning parents who, along with forbidding processed food and dragging their offspring to baby yoga, also avoid any medications that aren't strictly "natural." (Of course, vaccines are natural—they're derived from the naturally-occurring pathogen itself.)

That kind of thinking ignores the way vaccines work, through herd immunity. A community can only be protected when 92 percent or more of a population is immunized, and many of L.A.'s elementary schools are dipping far below that number. These parents aren't just risking their own kids' health, they're risking everyone's.

Wealth enables these people to hire fringe pediatricians who will coddle their irrational beliefs. But it doesn't entitle them to threaten an entire city's children with terrifying, 19th-century diseases for no reason.

[Eddie Teach]

parents in South Sudan have trouble getting their children vaccinated because of an ongoing civil war.

Wasn't breaking them off from Northern Sudan supposed to fix that? 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

parents in South Sudan have trouble getting their children vaccinated because of an ongoing civil war.

Wasn't breaking them off from Northern Sudan supposed to fix that? 

nah, that was to prevent them being slaughtered my muslims like during the last 50 years

[Martinus]

I'm surprised these people are not fined and, if they still object, lose their parenting rights.

[The Brain]

I'm surprised these people are not fined and, if they still object, lose their parenting rights.

Maybe you should make it mandatory before handing out fines. But I'm not a lawyer.

[KRonn]

Parents in these schools are submitting a form called a "personal belief exemption," which states that they are not vaccinating their kids due to "a diffuse constellation of unproven anxieties, from allergies and asthma to eczema and seizures," reporter Gary Baum writes.
In some schools, up to 60 to 70 percent of parents have filed these PBEs, indicating a vaccination rate as low as that of Chad or South Sudan. 

Well now, parents will be welcoming the influx of bizarre diseases, the likes of which had been pretty irradicated in the US before. I just don't understand this. I could see if there were nasty side effects and dangers but from what I read there's none of that, just the fear of fear itself....   

[Valmy]

No non-vaccinated children in public school.

[Valmy]

I just don't understand this. I could see if there were nasty side effects and dangers but from what I read there's none of that, just the fear of fear itself....   

When I had my kids all those assholes came out of the woodwork with their propaganda I told them where they could stick it.  But some people just do not know better.  Especially Hollywood, I mean those people actually convert to Scientology.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Stop shaming them. They are making a decision based on their being parents. Or so their apologists say, in some bizarre grammatical mind bender.

[Caliga]

Disgusting. They should be forced to live with the Amish until they decide to enter the 19th century.

Being forced to live with the Amish is punishment now?

FYI I actually don't think the Amish are opposed to vaccinations.

[Ed Anger]

I wish Tim could be forced to live without Internet.

HOW DO YOU POST NEWS WITH THIS BUTTER CHURN?