Vaccines have emerged as a hot topic for Federal policy-making this year -- in particular, the positions and beliefs that last year would have been called "vaccine hesitancy" -- and that's the topic I am revisiting this week. Accordingly, t his seems like a good time to state that I write this blog as an individual scholar and a concerned American citizen, not directly as part of my faculty assignment at the University of Colorado. (Nobody in academia will be surprised that what actually counts for my annual review is peer-reviewed journal articles, and that public-facing communication is viewed as a potential distraction!) I greatly appreciate the university as an environment for my research, and the laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado that support free speech and academic freedom. But it's also important to note that my writing here is separate from my teaching and my funded research programs, and in no way reflects any official position of the univers...