The Third Wave: Essential Workers and the Unvaccinated

The essential worker stigma that rose before mass vaccination campaigns from January 2021 to July 2022 was particularly telling of how far rolling stigma could extend. These were the health workers and essential workers who experienced direct stigma or self-stigma. They felt a deep sense of isolation from the communities and families to whom they relied for emotional support. Now, they were becoming pariahs—seen, through “the irrational,” as the easiest vector to contract the disease. Because over a year of behavior-based measures were in place to prevent and lower COVID-19, it was well established that if someone contracted the virus, they did something wrong. The belief was deeply grounded in questionnaire protocols, PPE, social distancing, and, for health and emergency workers, the fortitude of their standard operating procedures and standard operating guidelines. In the end, prevention is imperfect, but the workers became incredibly isolated. Following this, employers demanded proof of vaccination for some employees to work. Failure to provide this proof, or carelessness to forget, could lead to dismissal. These extreme labor actions would not have been tolerated pre-pandemic. Still, after 2 years of systemically othering groups that were irrationally considered risky, labor actions were not just taken as usual but praised with widespread buy-in.