Who holds the blade?

“No healthcare worker should be working unless they are FULLY VACC-INA-TED!” said the mayor of May Pen, banging his hands on the lectern for the emphasis no one needed.

The mayor was certainly uninhibited when he spoke earlier this week on this clearly irksome matter. How dare the unvaccinated have jobs? Somewhere among his proposal that healthcare workers who are not fully vaccinated should ‘guh a dem yaad’, he also suggested that there are lots of people out there with degrees and certificates who can replace them. I almost fell off my chair. I hope I never need hospitalisation. But if I do, I would wish to state categorically that if the only ‘healthcare professionals’ available are the ones with certificates in plumbing or the ones with degrees in economics, I would like to be returned home. I’ll take my chances.

Clearly spurred on by his own zeal to see the unvaccinated punished for their sins, the mayor may have forgotten that healthcare professionals are actually trained to become such. Which got me thinking, who really holds the blade where mandatory vaccination is concerned? Some seem to think laying off all unvaccinated healthcare workers will hurt them. The country is actually operating at the mercy of healthcare professionals as a group, currently. Posing as though we have the leverage to be making demands on them is quite silly since we don’t.

ALLOWED EXEMPTIONS

To make the point, I find it laughable that in Antigua and Barbuda, where COVID-19 vaccine mandates have been given the biggest push, the government has allowed exemptions for workers at the country’s main hospitals and clinics. Obviously, because they have no choice. Even amid efforts to squeeze the unvaccinated out of their jobs and out of normal life, governments have to be relying on some of the very same unvaccinated people to keep the wheels of their healthcare systems turning. It is pathetic.

If one would rather see the people out there with ‘degrees’ operate the country’s hospitals than see certified but unvaccinated healthcare workers continue showing up to work, his/her primary objective is clearly not a healthy country.

I am also not sure what our government’s vaccination strategy will be moving forward, but I surmise it might be along the lines of waiting until enough persons are voluntarily vaccinated for involuntary measures to then take effect. I suppose that’s smart… but given the prime minister’s not-long-past comments regarding his intention to eventually impose a ‘vaccine option’, such a strategy will be very obvious and will only make for terrible optics – and rightfully so.

I have explained why I don’t believe in forced vaccination so I won’t state all that again. This time the question I want to ask is who it is that holds the knife handle in relation to mandatory COVID-19 vaccines and who holds the blade? We can fire all the healthcare workers who are yet to be vaccinated and risk the collapse of the healthcare system, trying to prove a point (as the mandates seem to be for hardly any other purpose than point-scoring) or we can let the vaccinated and unvaccinated healthcare workers continue to work as they have been, in trying to keep the boat afloat. I think it’s a no-brainer.

SHEER INTOLERANCE

Another key issue that must be highlighted is our sheer intolerance towards people who simply make different lifestyle choices. It is troubling that just last year, the mayor suggested that the big countries like “Merica and Canada and England” go ahead and take the vaccine so we can see how it works before we take the nosedive in. Now, one year later, he says he thought the doctors and nurses were so ‘bright’ that they would have been at the front of the line to get their shots.

No surprise here. Many persons are just like the mayor. When they are hesitant, hesitancy is warranted. But once they step out boldly for the jab, the unvaccinated suddenly become spawns of Satan. Again, I am stating that no form of medical prescription or treatment should be mandatory in a modern democracy. My stance has not and will likely never change, regardless of my personal lifestyle choices. And, whereas we could debate the appropriateness of vaccine mandates in relation to vaccines that actually prevent transmission, the vaccine mandate argument falls woefully short in relation to COVID-19 vaccines.

Right now, there is a much bigger issue than with healthcare workers losing their jobs. If we lose them, we will only see a greater strain on an already overburdened healthcare system. Healthcare workers have a sort of special status where the management of this pandemic is concerned. Unlike people who go to restaurants asking questions about whether the chefs and waiters are vaccinated, the fact is, no one asks that when they are lying on a stretcher in a hospital, trying to stay alive. Let’s,therefore, cut the nonsense, shall we?

Kristen Gyles is a graduate student at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com.