Opinion | Vaccine requirements come with very real political risks. But they’re still worth pursuing.

Third, court battles could end up weakening long-standing vaccination requirements. “In order to accommodate workplace mandates, we are seeing a growing acceptance for exceptions that are being embraced by businesses as a relief valve to sidestep the covid-19 vaccine mandate,” Gottlieb said. “To me, that’s the most dangerous legacy. If courts and businesses start to move in the direction of recognizing broader exemptions to vaccine mandates, those loopholes will bleed right into things like childhood immunizations. We will end up having widened gaps that we’ve spent years trying to close.”