Our news partner The Seattle Times published a story this afternoon on the percentage of students in city Washington state schools who are exempt from being vaccinated for measles.
The Times story is here: Vaccine exemptions exceed 10 percent at dozens of Seattle-area schools.
The good news: No schools in Maple Leaf proper are in that batch.
Exactly what percentage of people/students vaccinated is required for “herd immunity” to kick in varies from source to source, but the number the Times is using – 90 percent – seems fairly average.
The Perkins School – a private school in the heart of Maple Leaf on Roosevelt Way Northeast, across from Maple Leaf Ace Hardware – has one of the lowest local exemptions – 1.7 percent, or one student.
Olympic View Elementary School is at 6 percent, Sacajawea Elementary at 9.3 percent. Eckstein Middle School is at 7.4 percent, Nathan Hale High School (not in the 98115 code) is 8.9 percent.
Here is the Times’ tool for finding schools and their data.
Below are the Times data for schools associated with the 98115 zip code. Data for some private schools was unavailable.
Hg Wells, Thimerosol is only in multi-use flu vaccines. Also, thimerosol is not elemental mercury from fish etc. – thimerosol is ethyl mercury, which is cleared from the body in hours. Don’t be fooled by antivaxxers who link it to methyl mercury, which happens to be a similar compound that is more toxic.
Thimerosol hasn’t been used for well over a decade in shots. It was almost completely eliminated from shots in 1999.
My understanding of vaccines is that the small amount of thimerosol (mercury) preservative can bioaccumulate along with other sources of heavy metals (fish, dental amalgam, background environmental amounts in nature) and that, while each exposure is not generally enough to cause a reaction, the aggregate can exceed what an individual can handle. Children tend to be more susceptible (as with lead), and those children in poor health who may require many dozens of injections (not just immunizations) run a greater risk of exceeding their body burden and reacting poorly to the preservative in combination with other sources of heavy metals. We vaccinated our kids for the usual stuff. We haven’t done the Gardisil, though.
Even worse, if you check out the 98125 zip code the Seattle Waldorf school has an exemption rate of 40%!!
The anti-vaccine thing is a problem on both the left and the right. The one thing parents who don’t vaccinate vaccinatable children share with each other is a lack of an understanding of science.
I have to say this is a bit surprising. I would assume that the rates would be slightly higher given that Maple Leaf seems to have a lot of left leaning progressives. Although, it’s also full of families who understand the difficulty of having sick kids while working, so people error on the side of preventing sickness however they can.
This whole issue is pretty polarizing. Being a parent I am against those that choose not to vaccinate and then send their child to public school. That is just my opinion.
What is even more scary is that the rules for sending my dog to doggie daycare and boarding are more strict that sending a kid to public school. Not a good representation of priorities.