Abstract

With unexpectedly good timing, I published a monograph on vaccine hesitancy in March 2021, just as COVID vaccine rollouts were reaching full steam in high income countries, including my own. My years of research and writing were near completion when the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified; my focus was on parents' hesitancy over routine childhood vaccinations. Vaccine hesitancy in industrialized nations has been intensely studied by social and behavioral scientists and was the subject of considerable media commentary and popular science writing up until COVID vaccine hesitancy redirected that energy. Past knowledge informs current understanding, and I proposed a shift in characterizing...