Compassion for the covid vaccine hesitant

My workplace will soon require all employees to get a covid vaccination, unless they can obtain a medical or religious exemption. The main point that remains unclear is whether declining a vaccine (and not getting an exemption) means a worker will lose their job.

One of my inclinations is to say, "fire the bastards." When I'm feeling more thoughtful, I'm inclined to say the worker should be suspended without pay until the covid crisis is over or until they opt for vaccination.

Either way, my impulse is to be punitive. I accept the logic that says, the fewer people who are vaccinated, the more often the virus will mutate, and the more dangerous it may become, possibly so much as to make the vaccines ineffective altogether. And frankly, vaccine hesitancy, along with resistance to simple and non-invasive public health measures like mask wearing, has fostered untold suffering.People die alone in hospitals. Some survivors (apparently) experience long-term health problems. Many, many of us live in fear.

Yet even so, my emotional reaction ("fire the bastards") gives me pause. You see, my reaction is not only instrumental. It's not only focused on obtaining a desired and desirable public health outcome.

My reaction is also fueled by a certain resentment. I might even call it malice and a wish for revenge against the hesitant. Worse, I carry that resentment against the people who belong to certain populations that are stereotypically assumed to be hesitant. It would be inconsiderate to describe this more vicious sentiment in any detail. So I won't. But I will say I find it difficult to separate the rational calculation from the strange combination of tribal identity and instinct for survival that informs my darker thoughts.

How often have people identified a real enemy or real potential for harm and then responded with merciless force far beyond the actual danger? Even if the response is commensurate to the danger, or as commensurate as any response reasonably can be--even in that case, how often have we define the non-compliant as in some ways subhuman? 

There for the grace of god go any of us. The trend seems now to favor mandates. Maybe someday those of us who are not vaccine hesitant will ourselves on the other side of a great and urgent question and have to face consequences for taking an unpopular stand.

Even if that never happens to us, what type of people do we become when we identify enemies? Or more precisely, what type of people are we tempted to become?

It starts with casual jokes about those crazy "anti-vaxxers" and devolves into hatred of entire people presumed to be "anti-vaxxers." It devolves into mobocracy. It escalates into endorsing a public health security state where much, much can be done to almost anyone as long as it's justified for the greater good of public health.

Hyperbole? Maybe. We're at least several steps removed from whatever dystopia I'm imagining. And the situation is so urgent, the mandates and likely penalties for non-compliance are so mild (perhaps too mild), and our civil society is so strong, that my worries are probably mostly theoretical.

And maybe all coercive measures, no matter how reasonable, justified, or instrumental to a greater good--maybe they all must of necessity occasion the stronger and more vile emotions. Maybe the best  of those measures operate in part to check those sentiments. And each of us is nuanced moral agent. Maybe we can check those sentiments and be better than our principles. Maybe we can keep our eyes on the prize, which in this case is taming coronavirus disease.