America is not ready for the blowback to vaccine mandates

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has case rates spiking exponentially across the United States, and though hospitalizations and deaths haven't followed anything like the same pattern, the sheer size of the caseload means those numbers are ticking upward, too. The difference between the two paces is partly due to Omicron's comparatively mild effects, but widespread immunity from a combination of initial vaccination, boosters, and recovery from previous COVID cases is an obvious factor, too.

That latter point has many escalating calls for broad vaccine mandates, perhaps as a condition of commercial air travel (as my colleague Ryan...