my anecdotal experience was/is that many medical staff themselves succumbed to vaccine conspiracies, and would freely admit and bitch about masking and vaccines when off the job.

Not even just off the job. I worked at a surgery center during the first few years of COVID, and I still distinctly remember at least one surgeon walking around the clinical areas with a mask that read “this mask does nothing”. And in pretty sure he was seeing patients wearing that too.

I am still baffled by that, because this fucking window licker had to have taken microbiology, and literally wore a mask every goddamned times they did the thing they trained for.