If you think mask bans are “no big deal” because there’s medical exemptions, please consider the following:
Police are not doctors
Many disabilities are invisible
Disabled people don’t live in a bubble. I need my friends and caregivers to mask to protect me
Everyone should have the right to protect their health, you shouldn’t have to already be sick to be permitted to mask
Criminalizing masks sends a message that maskers are “bad”. It emboldens anti-maskers and increases odds of aggression
The reality is that mask bans are discriminatory, ableist and eugenicist. They push disabled people out of public spaces. They put marginalized and POC at increased risk of police profiling.
There’s no official policy for a medical exemption either, it’s at police discretion.
If you’re stopped and questioned, you will have to prove you’re masking for the “right reasons”
I’m more than willing to admit that if I were stopped by a cop for masking, I would appear nervous, shaky, tachycardic and probably “suspicious”.
Not because I’m doing anything wrong, but because my illnesses do not respond well to stress and the police are stressful.
It’s not right to put the onus on the masker to defend their right to mask. We’re still in a global pandemic. Texas has a measles outbreak. There’s tuberculosis in Kansas. Bird flu is spreading and it’s the worst year for influenza A in over a decade.
Masks are a public health tool. They’re a disability accommodation. They should NOT be criminalized.
For more on mask bans and medical exemptions, I wrote an article on the Nassau County ban here:
https://www.disabledginger.com/p/nassau-county-ny-makes-masking-illegal
