The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was the first to receive an emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December. And as of Monday, it is the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive full approval from the FDA for people over age 16. It's a milestone moment in the prolonged public health crisis. The status upgrade may not affect the lives of people who have already received one or two of the 200 million Pfizer doses that have been administered in the U.S., but it's a game changer for the millions of Americans who aren't vaccinated. Why? Because although a small portion of the population are adamantly opposed to getting immunized against COVID-19 for ideological or mystical reasons, many of those who are unvaccinated aren't dug in on the position. In fact, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 31% of those who have yet to receive a shot said they would be more likely to do so after the FDA gave full approval. Fantastic. Now they have no excuse to not get a shot of the Pfizer vaccine, other than finding one. Moderna could receive full approval for its mRNA vaccine as soon as next month. Still, approval may not be enough to motivate procrastinators who are rooted in a foolish misbelief they aren't at risk. (On a related note, it's perplexing that some people would reject a safe and widely available vaccine that has gone through extensive clinical trials and been relentlessly scrutinized, and instead ingest ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine intended for livestock, on the basis of a few suggestive studies, one of which has already been pulled from a journal.) Everyone who is human is at risk of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, serious long-term effects and death — but all of those outcomes are greatly reduced by vaccination. With full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, public employers and private businesses now have a green light to start imposing tough vaccination requirements on employees and even customers, which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says they they have the right to do to protect their workers. On Monday, the Pentagon said it will require vaccinations for U.S. military service members. Some employers already had imposed vaccination requirements, including the L.A. Unified School District and the city of Los Angeles, though requiring a vaccination with merely an emergency use authorization is a legally gray area.