The coronavirus vaccine is no longer an option for many.

With one announcement Thursday, President Biden removed the question of whether hospitals or factories or major universities would require employees to be vaccinated as a condition of employment. Work for any employer with more than 100 people on the payroll? The vaccine would be necessary or the company could get a $14,000 fine per violation.

It is a huge move. It is likely to be an unpopular one with those who have opted out to this point despite incentives from governments and employers and even Krispy Kreme handing out doughnuts to those with vaccination cards. If an opportunity to win $1 million in some statewide lotteries — although not in Pennsylvania — didn’t get some to roll up a sleeve, it is unlikely any enticement would ever work.

And that is how we get to the point where options are no longer on the table.

The federal government is stepping in, and while that is a big step, it isn’t unprecedented. Vaccine requirements are something government has had for years.

George Washington’s troops were being attacked as much by disease as by British soldiers. He countered by requiring all of them to be vaccinated.

Smallpox has been a frequent subject of vaccine mandates. The first school to require vaccines was targeting smallpox in 1850. No one gets smallpox vaccines anymore because smallpox only exists in laboratories.

The military doesn’t ask if people want to be vaccinated. You are issued a dizzying array of shots along with your combat boots and uniform.

And schools? Any parent can testify keeping track of vaccination records and turning them in is part of attending school. It has been since 1962, resulting in a litany of common childhood diseases becoming anachronisms. At least they were until a since-debunked study linking one vaccine with autism gained traction in 1997. Diseases that were all but extinct bounded back, prompting the World Health Organization to call vaccine hesitancy one of the greatest threats to global health.

The U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on past cases and come down on the side of vaccines as a public good. And that is just in reference to health.

In this instance, the mandate could be good for the economy, as well. Employers do not have to take the hit for requiring their workers to get a shot. It isn’t their choice. The government is requiring it.

And as the delta variant increases covid cases and swells emergency rooms so much that some, like Excela Health Frick Hospital, have resorted to alternate measures such as tents for noncovid intake, the numbers have proved what was predicted. Vaccines mean significantly lower risk of hospitalization and death, as detailed by The Commonwealth Fund, a health policy nonprofit.

Vaccination is nothing new, and neither is requiring it for the greater good.

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