NHS Anti-Vaxxers

Several thousand NHS workers and their supporters, yesterday, took part in an anti-vaxxer demonstration, in London, protesting against a requirement by the NHS that its staff be vaccinated.  Those demonstrating have claimed not to be anti-vaxxers, only opponents of compulsory vaccination for NHS staff, against Covid, and oddly, many of those on the Left that have protested loudly in recent months, against anti-vaxxers, who have joined with fascists and others on the Right, have, themselves, been rather tacit in their comments on this latest anti-vaxxer demo.

But, the truth is that, however, they want to dress it up, those protesting, yesterday, did so on essentially the same basis as other anti-vaxxers.  When, the vaccines first became available, I was myself rather cautious about them, as it appeared that the testing of them had been somewhat rushed, in order to get them rolled out quickly.  But, we now have more than a year's experience of these vaccines, and the tiny number of side effects have already been identified, resulting from them, and appropriate actions taken.  In terms of any balance of risks, the benefit clearly lies with getting vaccinated rather than not.

Vaccination is the clear means of preventing serious ill-health from Covid, and also of bringing the pandemic to an end.  I can well understand, why even with the weight of evidence, some young healthy people feel no need to be vaccinated, even with a tiny risk from the vaccine, because they see, also only a tiny risk from Covid itself.  In general, I am opposed to compulsory vaccination, but, as I have said previously, an alternative might be that those who become ill having refused vaccination have to pay for any NHS treatment.  However, when it comes to NHS staff, the situation is somewhat different.

Firstly, NHS staff are not the same as any other group of workers, apart from care workers.  They are workers who are coming into contact with people who are themselves already ill, elderly and otherwise vulnerable.  That means they have a specific duty of care to all of those vulnerable people.  Now its true, that being vaccinated does not prevent someone still being infected with Covid, and, thereby, being a carrier of it, but, it does mean that those vaccinated do not themselves become seriously ill, and given staff shortages in the NHS, that is an important factor.  One argument being used against a requirement for vaccination, is that those that do not comply will have to leave the NHS, but if they are not vaccinated, and so become seriously ill, or even just have to self isolate, that would cause even bigger loss of available staff.

But, the other point is that workers in the NHS also are supposed to be themselves scientifically minded, and so to recognise the rational basis for vaccination, as against all of the various conspiracy theories and unscientific nonsense being peddled by the anti-vaxxers.  If they are themselves taken in by those conspiracy theories and reject the science, then probably they are the wrong people for the job anyway.

It is not unreasonable that the NHS or care homes should require its workers to be vaccinated, any more than it is reasonable for them to demand they use appropriate PPE, and other safety measures.  They should press ahead with it, and oppose the anti-vaxxers resistance.