As the vaccines for kids have rolled out, several people I know have gotten their 4-year-olds vaccinated, even though the FDA has only approved the vaccine for ages 5-11. It turns out they are not asking kids to show photo ID when they get their shots, so if you want to break the rules and get a 4-year-old vaccinated, you can. I assume there are limits to this — a baby is obviously not 5 and nobody’s going to let you get away with pretending that she is — but the point is, you can get away with stuff. And so my friends did.

Were they right? Well, I think that they were. And they came to this conclusion by doing their own research.

In the circles I travel in, that phrase is almost always a joke poking fun at anti-vaxxers. But it’s what vax enthusiasts skirting the rules to get doses for 4-year-olds are doing, too. And more broadly than that, we are basically all doing our own research during this pandemic because the prescriptive public health guidance is not, and has never been, infor…