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Comment by DanFeldman | Hacker News Reader

> In 2015, Wired reported that one daycare at Google had a 68% measles vaccination rate, although Google contested the accuracy of the article at the time.

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FWIW here was Google’s response in the linked article.

“The reported numbers for the current year are lower simply because many parents have not yet provided updated immunization records. We've asked them all to do this, so we can update the figures.”

In four year it doesn't seem like they updated the figure...

Edit: I stand corrected, even if some parts of google are still quite low

In the article or in the DPH records? Wired did a follow-up the next year and found much higher vaccination rates[1]. Regardless, just based on the variance/number of adjustments, I'm not sure the DPH records are really a very accurate picture of the true vaccination rates.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/03/silicon-valley-daycares-still-...

That sounds like corporate speak for "We don't know exactly how many children in our daycare aren't immunized, but we're going to assume that every child who hasn't provided us records is immunized since it gives us plausible deniability."

I'd actually believe the "it's old data" explanation. Here's a searchable map of vaccination rates for day care, linked from the Santa Clara County public health department website:

https://www.shotsforschool.org/child-care/how-doing/

Put in 94041 for zip code and you'll get most of the day cares that Googlers send their kids to, including a couple Google proprietary ones. Most are in the green, and the only one in the red (Little Prodigy, near Castro Street) isn't actually near Castro Street anymore - they moved several years ago, indicating that the data is several years out of date. The Google proprietary day care I know of is The Orchard on Bernardo street in Sunnyvale; it's listed as having >95% vaccination rates, and it's also closed now (has been for almost 2 years), again indicating the data's a little old.

Herd immunity for measles requires a vaccination rate of 95%.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/herd-immunity/

Herd immunity science is shaky to say the least:

http://www.tetyanaobukhanych.com/herd_immunity.html

The source you quoted is a well-known quack.

She is a trained immunologist, but besides, her article is well reasoned and provides references for every fact she cites. Compare that to the PBS article in the root comment.

Attaching a moniker "quack" at will is no way to have a discussion.

That article is not at all well-reasoned. There's a core of truth, which is that even with 100% vaccination a population may not always have effective herd immunity from measles, because the vaccine is not 100% effective over all timespans, and the threshold of immunity required for effective herd immunity against something as insanely infectious as measles is quite high.

But the author goes far beyond that conclusion and rails against the very idea of herd immunity, and claims that since herd immunity may not be possible in practice when dealing with measles, there should be no stigma against opting out of vaccination. These conclusions are very weakly argued, and the obvious counter-arguments are not addressed.

Dr. Manish Sadarangani, the Sauder Chair in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of British Columbia: "at least 90-95% of the population need to be vaccinated" (https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/news/herd-immunity-how-does-it-work)

Sebastian Funk, Associate Professor at the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: "to achieve [termination of measles transmission,] the population immune needs to be 93-95%, the herd immunity threshold." (https://www.who.int/immunization/sage/meetings/2017/october/...)

The article that I linked shows why even 100% vaccinated population will not achieve herd immunity. This is the meat of the article really, read it.

There is a substitution of terms in the first statement that you quoted. To stop transmission you need 90-95% of the population being _immune_ to the disease, not vaccinated against it. Do you see the difference?

The second quote by Funk got it right. But again please read the article why this is unattainable even with the 100% vaccination rate.

I don't think that it implies that many Googlers are antivaxxers.

MMR vaccine is given at 1 year, pre-school starts at 3 years. Making a rough assumption of uniform age-distribution at daycares, it's expected that about 1/3 of babies won't be vaccinated against measles.

Edit: Linked article disproves this theory: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/tech-companies-and-vaccines/ . "According to the California DPH data, ..., At a nearby Google daycare, ... Just 68 percent are up to date with their MMRs". ... "The California DPH numbers only cover children between 2 and 5 years old"

Are you saying that 1/3 of kids at daycares are under 1 year-old?

Definitely less than 1/3, as older kids are more likely to go to day-care, but I couldn't find any data about age distribution at daycares...

I wonder if it counts 'not up to date' as older millennials that have only 2 MMR vaccinations. The latest guideline from CDC recommends a booster for adults in this case: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6701a7.htm

EDIT: Nevermind, you're strictly talking daycare. Probably looks worse with this factored in.

Coincidentally I just got the MMR vaccine again last week. A blood test found that I didn't have rubella antibodies (guess it wore off).

With regards to the question of "many Googlers being antivaxers", I wonder how common it is for a family to not think of themselves as anti-vax, but through bad luck in or poor research in selecting a pediatrician they end up getting fewer vaccines for their kids. Personally, I think I might know one such family where that seemed to be the case, someone who didn't seem to realize something kooky their pediatrician had said. I would imagine that would come up by the time they go to school though.

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