Very Low Vaccination Rates at Silicon Valley Daycares
wired.com
wired.com
Um, "half of the ones we looked at are below average" is exactly what you'd expect with a normal (or any symmetric, really) distribution.
They also assert there is a 92 percent immunization threshold for herd immunity for measles, and note that half are below that level -- which is a legitimate grounds for some concern -- but then go on and compare immunization levels for other diseases to that 92 percent threshold, without any discussion of why.
And deep in the article we find the response from Google that explains why the current-year numbers are unreliable -- they reflect the share of total enrollees that have provided documentation of meeting vaccination requirements, so the fact that documentation from parents is incomplete for the current year results in understatement of the current rates.
A better headline than Wired's "The Sickeningly Low Vaccination Rates at Silicon Valley Day Cares" might be "The Sickeningly Shoddy Journalism on Vaccination Rates at Silicon Valley Day Cares at Wired".
I might be missing something, but aren't they comparing half of the tech day-care centres with the average data of centres across the state (broader than tech)? e.g., you might expect that all of the tech centres (smartish parents in forward-thinking industries) were above average?
That might be a hypothesis worth exploring, but I think many people in tech overestimate both how well-informed and forward thinking they are and, even moreso, how well-informed and forward thinking the industry in general is outside of their own personal (or, in the latter case, the industry's defining) area of focus.
Plus, again, having no knowledge, Oracle might have a section of people with Top Secret clearance, further lending to more faith into the 'establishment'.