The deadline for NHS staff to be fully vaccinated against Covid 19 is April 1st 2022. If any staff are unvaccinated from this day and don’t have a medical exemption, they will lose their jobs. Whilst I understand that in theory, if everyone is vaccinated it will be easier to move forward from the pandemic and live with Covid. However, with the amount of hardship some people have gone through during the pandemic, I struggle with the ethics behind sacking the well praised ‘heroes’ who have helped the country on the frontline.
During the pandemic, people up and down the country gathered on their doorsteps to clap for the NHS once a week. The campaign delivered a sense of national pride for our health service, and those people who work within it. Since we have gone back to a normal way of life, I feel like this sense of gratefulness has diminished, and has instead been replaced with anger in many places as the public grow frustrated with how long the pandemic is going on for.
Whilst I do believe we need to move on, and learn to live in a world with Covid, I believe it is unethical for individuals to lose their jobs for a personal choice. Everyone should have the freedom of choice to get the vaccine or not get it and I believe we must respect individuals’ decisions. If someone has had Covid, and has antibodies, why should they lose their jobs? I do believe that we have got to the point where herd immunity is essential, in a way too many people have got Covid for us to try to get rid of it in the country. Surely, once everyone has had covid, most will have a natural immunity towards the virus and therefore be protect regardless of being vaccinated or not.
Personally, I am triple jabbed and do believe that the vaccine will help us in general. Whilst the vaccine did not stop me getting Covid, I had minimal symptoms and could get back to work immediately after my isolation was over. Furthermore, my parents had Covid at the start of December just after they received their boosters. Again, the vaccine did not stop them catching Covid, but both were okay and recovered quickly. I believe that in a world which is now so divided, nobody should be persecuted against because of a personal choice.