California bill would end all vaccination loopholes except medical

[proverbialwisdom]

25. Talk about clusters? "Los Alamos schools top NM in vaccine exemptions" reports Albuquerque Journal.

Read and wonder whether the false framing applied to this issue is best demolished. Certainly, this doesn't fit.

http://www.abqjournal.com/557820/news/los-alamos-top-in-nm-for-vaccine-exemptions.html



Los Alamos schools top NM in vaccine exemptions

By Mark Oswald / El Norte
PUBLISHED: Friday, March 20, 2015 at 12:02 am

The tally is in, and the major New Mexico school district with the largest percentage of students opting out of vaccinations against contagious diseases is not in one of the state’s known hotbeds for crystal gazing, cradle therapy or psychic readings.

Nope, the highest percentage of vaccine exemptions is in New Mexico’s, and one of the world’s, science centers: Los Alamos.

According to a recent report by the state Department of Health, 2.3 percent of students in the Los Alamos Public Schools have exemptions from having to get vaccinations.

That’s a higher percentage than in the public schools of our New Age-friendly and alternative thought capitals of Santa Fe and Taos. The statewide average is less than 1 percent.

The rating for Los Alamos seems demographically in line with the findings of a 2014 survey by the Health Department of 794 vaccine-exemptor parents – 74 percent were Anglo and 67 percent had at least four years of college.

But one would think Los Alamos would be different. It’s a town founded on science, and the scientific evidence is overwhelming that vaccines don’t cause autism or other developmental disabilities. Many people in Los Alamos don’t just have college degrees – they’re scientists, with lots of degrees. Los Alamos National Laboratory in fact has done some heavy research on infectious disease and development of an HIV vaccine.

“That’s a curiosity to me, as well,” said Los Alamos schools superintendent Gene Schmidt of his district’s relatively high rate of vaccination exemptions among what he called “a pretty scientific and literate community.”

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Exemption Rates

Highest vaccine exemption rates among school New Mexico public school districts with at least 600 students:

* Los Alamos 2.3%
* Taos 2.0%
* Santa Fe 2.1%

Highest vaccine exemption rates among New Mexico counties for children 4 to 18 years old (state average is 0.8 percent):

* Taos 3.2%
* Los Alamos 3.1%
* De Baca 3.1%
* Santa Fe 2.6%