Another reason state and local health agencies will continue to wrestle with tensions over lifting restrictions is their own institutional form of PTSD—a well-founded fear that COVID-19 could fell our society again. They and the elected officials whom they advise vary widely in how much authority they are willing to assert, however. Some agencies will remove all precautions in the face of overwhelming pressure from business owners or the general public. Others will mandate or strongly advise that precautions be maintained by the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike, either at all times or if cases and hospitalizations increase again—as they likely will this fall and winter. Many academic public-health experts favor more stringent restrictions than public-sector practitioners, including me, believe are realistic. Experts can fairly argue that because we’re all in this together, universal precautions should continue even when the existential threat to society has passed. But it’s quite another thing to enforce those restrictions on businesses and workers whose livelihoods remain at risk and on the large and growing swath of the population that has been vaccinated and rightly expects to return to pre-pandemic activities. Ultimately, the path forward requires returning to the primary mission of public safety: protecting those who cannot reasonably be expected to protect themselves. In the U.S., the highest priority for all government agencies, employers, and health-related organizations should be to ensure truly universal access to vaccines. A successful policy would ensure that all residents of communities with low vaccination rates are confronted with vaccination drives in their houses of worship, pharmacies, community centers, and workplaces. It would also provide people with paid time off to get shots and recover from side effects. To overcome hesitancy—including that resulting from some Americans’ experience of poverty and societal racism—health agencies should work closely with trusted messengers and media channels to relay pro-vaccination messages built upon facts, respect, and empathy.