healthcare workers first responders and essential services.

I think its hilarious and ironic how they were all praised as hero's a year ago braving the corona virus with no vaccine. Now those very same people who refuse the vaccine are scum of the earth. I just love hypocrisy and irony.

Hypocrisy suggests a different standard is applied to some but that is false for the example you provide. 

Hospital workers are heroic in their fight to combat the pandemic whether or not they choose to be vaccinated but coronavirus is a highly infectious disease and the rules of basic sanitation and hygiene require us to minimize the risk of infection among the populations of highly vulnerable patients in hospitals.  Hospital workers have to be able to look families in the eye and say they did everything they could to save their loved one.  If some hospital workers are not vaccinated then that statement is obviously false.

A surgeon is heroic for cracking open the chest of a dying car accident victim and coaxing that victim's heart back to life.  But if that same surgeon refuses to wash his hands after pooping because Donald Trump told him not to and the car accident victim dies of sepsis three days later- well, not only was all that prior effort wasted but an easily prevented death was not prevented for the stupidest reasons imaginable.  Is the surgeon still a hero or is that question now more complicated?

Just because somebody is a hero one day and a fool the next doesn't mean that some standard must have changed.   Humans are complicated and self-contradictory by nature.  To quote the American Bard:

sadolite isn't the type to listen to reason. he thinks what he thinks, and you can't change any of it. 

- another Bard

This is what happens when "the party of science" is in authoritative power.

It almost goes without saying.  If one were subject to reason, one would not be anti-vax.  There is no rational counterargument to good hygiene in hospitals.

While the COVID-19 vaccines are not yet fully approved for commercial use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the FDA has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of several vaccines due to the public health emergency, based on data from clinical trials that included tens of thousands of participants. Still, the condensed timeline in which the vaccines were developed and received EUA has raised safety and efficacy concerns for some HCWs.

Herd immunity can be achieved through vaccination or via previous infections, which eventually lead to natural or physiological immunity. Some Israeli HCWs, as well as some Americans and Canadians in the general population, have expressed a preference for physiologic immunity, rather than obtaining immunity via vaccination. Individuals who believe the seriousness of COVID-19 has been exaggerated perceive the risk of vaccination to be greater than the risk of infection.

A key factor in gaining acceptance of a new vaccine is trust. Media misinformation can cause public doubts about disease spread, prevention, lethality, and vaccine safety, and can promote mistrust of the government, policymakers, health authorities, and pharmaceutical companies. Many members of the public, including HCWs, have been exposed to conspiracy theories (especially on social media) such as the claims that novel coronavirus was intentionally created by the government or that health organizations have exaggerated COVID-19’s lethality for pharmaceutical and political gain. Such misinformation calls into question authorities’ integrity and undermines efforts to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

HCWs and rural Americans report that a sense of personal freedom informs their attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Clinicians are held to the standard of informed consent when recommending treatments to their patients, and while COVID-19 vaccination remains elective, it is understandable that HCWs prefer to make their own choices about it.