When vaccine mandates were put in place in Canada and around the world, they were meant to slow the transmission of COVID-19, a novel and terrifying worldwide threat. A small segment of our population objected to the requirement of vaccination to be able to be in public spaces. This included some health-care workers.
In B.C. approximately 2,500 health care workers refused the vaccine and were terminated from their employment. With a health-care workforce of around 190,000, this amounted to 1.3 per cent of the workforce. I think it is important to emphasize this extremely small number. Campaigns like “Hire Back our Healthcare Heroes” suggested that hiring back these unvaccinated workers would be a solution to shortages of healthcare professionals. That clearly would not be the case, and what is heroic about not protecting vulnerable patients?
It is difficult for me to comprehend how anyone working in health care does not understand that vaccines are a key component of communicable disease prevention. I also find some irony in this anti-vaccine sentiment in health care, as in the past, health-care unions fought to ensure their employers provided protective vaccines to their workforce. Under worker compensation legislation in B.C., health-care employers have to have communicable disease prevention programs in their workplaces. The most effective way to prevent transmission of communicable diseases is vaccination.
In this current election campaign, we have a local candidate who suggests vaccination requirements in health care are a violation of rights and a leadership candidate who doesn’t agree that vaccine mandates are appropriate. These attitudes ignore the overwhelming majority of health-care employees and British Columbians who did get vaccinated and respected the mandates.
Those health-care workers, who faced nasty protests and aggression from a small number of persons, and remained working throughout all the uncertainty and disruption, are the real health care heroes in my estimation.
Alison Hutchison
Nelson
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