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You would be an emergency if the vacuum takes a crap on you. The T/C is your back-up if the vacuum fails. I fly rental planes and some planes I would never take into actual, most rentals don't have a second pump. If the T/C fails, its anybodys guess as to when or if the vacuum goes south. Tell ATC that your T/C has failed and they will ask if you are you declaring an emergency. You then tell them that no emergency now but immediate vectors for the ILS are required. They will go out of their way to avoid needless paperwork and give you anything you want. Also, some controllers will declare an emergency for you and you would never know it. They would not keep you in the air long enough for something else to go wrong, as they know Murphy is your co-pilot that day.
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If your TC and vacuum fails, you're just having a bad day.
I have a different stance on this point though. If you're flying an aircraft with a single vacuum pump and a failed TC, you're right: if your vacuum fails, you're screwed! But, you'd be in just as much trouble in a single-engine airplane if you were to lose that one engine in IMC. I also don't really have a backup to my altimeter, but I go flying anyways.
Backups like TCs are good safety measures, no doubt about that. However, losing a backup does not strike me as an imminent dangerous situation here.