It’s not the just hippies. It’s the nerds too.
by digby
Everyone’s been condemning the “vegetarian, tie-dyed” California hippie moms who are refusing to get their kids vaccinated. You know the type, right? And I’m quite sure there are more than a few of the anti-vaxxers who fit that description.
But look who else is failing to be rational these days?
The scientists, technologists, and engineers who populate Silicon Valley and the California Bay Area deserve their reputation as innovators, building entire new economies on the strength of brains and imagination. But some of these people don’t seem to be vaccinating their children.
A WIRED investigation shows that some children attending day care facilities affiliated with prominent Silicon Valley companies have not been completely vaccinated against preventable infectious diseases. At least, that’s according to a giant database from the California Department of Public Health, which tracks the vaccination rates at day care facilities and preschools in the state. We selected more than 20 large technology and health companies in the Bay Area and researched their day care offerings. Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s data.
And those six have a level of measles vaccination that does not provide the “herd immunity” critical to the spread of the disease. Now, this data has limitations—most critically, it might not be current. But it also suggests an incursion of anti-science, anti-vaccine thinking in one of the smartest regions on Earth.
There goes my pet theory that anti-vaxxers are people who believe everything they read on the internet. That can’t be true of computer nerds. Can it?
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