With the delta coronavirus variant spreading rapidly among unvaccinated people, many businesses, venues and even cities are enacting vaccine mandates to help protect people in public spaces.

The vaccine mandates have been positively received in communities with high vaccination rates, but many people who have chosen to not get vaccinated arent all that thrilled about the rules. Some believe vaccine mandates infringe on peoples personal liberties. Others claim theyre illegal and an unprecedented public health move.

In reality, the whole purpose of vaccine mandates is to protect the publics health and theyre certainly not new measures.

Vaccine mandates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are part of optimizing the health and well-being of individuals and employees, said Faith Fletcher , an assistant professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

We have hard proof that the shots do a good job of this. The vaccines dramatically reduce the chance of getting infected in the first place, meaning there will be fewer infected people walking around shedding the virus to others. The shots reduce peoples odds of needing to be hospitalized and thus pushing our health care system to the brink. They also significantly reduce transmission, and even when vaccinated people get sick, the duration of how long theyre contagious is shortened.

Mandates are mainly reserved for when there is a serious threat to public health. Vaccines work best when enough people in the population receive them. A mandate can push more people to get vaccinated and drive up vaccination rates in an effort to control future outbreaks.

Yet, because the vaccines and other public health measures for COVID-19 have been highly politicized, there has been a ton of misinformation especially when it comes to mandates. Here are a few of the most common myths and the facts about them:

Myth 1: Vaccine Mandates Are Unprecedented

Vaccine mandates date back to the smallpox outbreak of the late 1800s. These rules arent unprecedented, but the pandemic is, Fletcher said. Never have we seen an infectious disease like COVID-19 spread so quickly around the globe.

Mandates are commonly used to slow the spread of other infectious diseases. Many health care systems routinely require workers to be vaccinated against the flu, hepatitis B and measles plus rubella. Schools require kids to get certain inoculations before classes begin. The military also requires vaccines just look at the anthrax vaccine mandated in the late 1990s, said Sharona Hoffman , a professor of health law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

States have the authority to promote public health, and though it hasnt been necessary for them to enact widespread vaccine mandates in our time, they did so when smallpox was rampant in the 19th century, Hoffman added.