My current stance for this stage in 2022 is dominated by a practical consideration - that there will be more harm to patient safety from sacking large numbers of staff in a short timeframe that is now looming large on the horizon, than there will be from postponing the deadline.
Beyond that it gets complicated, because individuals beliefs, understanding and attitudes get complicated and are often somewhat contradictory. Some people resist stuff when it is forced upon them without a choice, or when all the emphasis is on coercion via negative means. Some people have the wrong sense of risk, or a different attitude to what is really necessary for themselves, eg even some people in the health care profession probably see medical interventions as a last resort, and are aware of or afraid of potential downsides. Some have a blase attitude because they already caught it or were left on the front lines with no decent protection for a long time, and they struggle to see beyond their own experiences of that period and their typical mindset when it comes to personal risk. Especially if they cope with life by ignoring a whole bunch of potential risks, by not spending too long getting caught up in a world of worst-case risks and scary applications of the imagination.
I do care rather a lot about hospital infection control and have mentioned that broader topic many dozens of times in this pandemic. I would much prefer that everyone who qualifies to work in such professions had it properly drilled into them during their years of training what is expected from them in terms of being vaccinated etc. But there is a difference between that, and suddenly making a switch long after they've been employed in such roles.
And I have a very large problem with the fact that some personality types really struggle to imagine themselves causing harm to their patients. Some people are very resistant to that, such as the doctors and surgeons that have to be weeded out because they think that hand washing rules and other hygiene matters dont apply to them. Combinations of arrogance, narrow-mindedness and a sense of self that is dominated by them seeing themselves exclusively as a wonderful force for good can contribute to such sorry states of affairs. Such thing may be exascerbated by needing a certain degree of confidence and self-assuredness in the first place in order to be able to do those sorts of jobs without being paralysed by doubt and the weight of responsibility (I couldnt do such jobs because I would worry all the time about fucking up). But all that side of things is just one corner of the problematic landscape, there are many other issues too, many different reasons why some are resisting getting vaccinated despite their front line healthcare role. eg there are also overlaps with all the other sorts of vaccine hesitancy we see in the wider public, that have nothing in particular to do with their healthcare job. And there is sometimes excessively binary thinking about vaccines, refusing to appreciate that there is still some benefit even when vaccines are not 100% effective at achieving particular things. Which in this case may manifest as people claiming there is no point in terms of patient safety to them being vaccinated if it doesnt completely eliminate the risk of transmission, regardless of whether it does still reduce the risk of transmission a bit.
