Decades-old laws banning masks, often enacted in response to masked terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan, are on the books in at least 18 states and Washington, D.C., according to the International Nonprofit Law Center. Lawmakers in some areas have passed bills creating health exemptions during the coronavirus pandemic, but officials in others have vowed not to enforce the decrees.
Immunocompromised Americans and civil rights activists, who have long criticized mask bans as a bludgeon used against people protesting police shootings, economic inequality and environmental injustice, say mask bans are being reinstated because COVID-19 is no longer being treated as a public health emergency. High levels of coronavirus in wastewater across much of the Sun Belt and Florida are an early sign of a summer COVID-19 wave, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Lawmakers eager to return to work Pre-pandemic mask regulations suggest legislation will not target medically vulnerable people Wearing a mask can be extremely beneficial for people trying to avoid catching respiratory viruses and others, but critics say such an approach is unrealistic and will subject mask wearers to further ostracism and harassment from police and other citizens.
The day after the North Carolina state legislature passed a mask ban in response to pro-Palestinian protests at the University of North Carolina in June, Shari Stuart said a man confronted her for wearing a mask. Stuart said she was walking into a Raleigh-area auto repair shop for an oil change when a man walked up to her wearing a surgical mask. When she tried to explain that she had stage 4 breast cancer and a weakened immune system, the man called her a “fucking liberal” and claimed masks were illegal. He then coughed on her and told her he hoped the cancer would kill her, she said.
Stuart, who spoke about her experience for the first time to a local television station, said she fears such harassment will get worse if mask restrictions become law, even though the bill allows for the wearing of “medical or surgical masks intended to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.”
“If you wear a mask, people are still going to think you’re breaking the law. They don’t care what you do wrong,” Stewart told The Washington Post. “I thought we should have masks that say ‘immunocompromised’ or ‘cancer patient’ or whatever, but we shouldn’t have to do that.”
Some worry that people of color will bear the brunt of law enforcement.
“When you have laws that require you to not do certain things with your body, who is affected the most? Black and brown people,” says Diana Cejas, a Black pediatric neurologist in Chapel Hill who wears a mask in part because cancer treatments have left scar tissue around her airways, putting her at higher risk for respiratory illness. “But I’m not going to give up trying to keep myself and my patients safe.”
In a statement announcing his veto, Governor Cooper said the bill “would strip away protections for people who want to protect their health by wearing a mask and expose them to criminal prosecution.”
Republicans say those concerns are overblown because the bill contains health-related exemptions, and their party holds the majority and has enough votes to override Cooper’s veto.
“Bad actors have used masks to hide their identities while committing crimes and terrorizing innocent people,” state Sen. Danny Earl Britt Jr. (R-S.C.), one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. “Instead of ending this intimidation, the Governor is encouraging bad actors by continuing to give them time to hide from the consequences of their actions. I look forward to voting to override this veto and ensuring that people with real health concerns can protect themselves and others.”
Opponents of mask restrictions have questioned how the health exception would work if protesters were wearing medical masks. She says she tries to stay healthy even in crowded places.
“When there’s a political protest, I don’t understand how authorities are going to distinguish between people who are wearing masks for health reasons and people who are wearing masks to protect their identity,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union who has written about the issue. “It creates a situation where selective policing is likely to occur against protesters authorities don’t like.”
Sylvie Tudor, one of the protest organizers with the University of North Carolina chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, said participants were specifically encouraged to wear masks to curb the spread of the disease and that the Republican bill was an attempt to stifle protests.
“As defenders of Palestinian life, it is our duty to respect the real danger that infectious diseases pose to all people, whether in Chapel Hill or Palestine,” said Tudor, a doctoral student in sociology.
but Adam Goldstein, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, supports legislation limiting mask wearing. She said she was concerned about the harassment that Jewish faculty, staff and students face as a result of widespread mask-wearing. Unidentified. Goldstein said protesters were covering their faces with kaffiyehs., The scarf is often worn at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. They approached him and shouted “Intifada” while holding signs calling for the release of Israelis being held hostage by Hamas.
He said people at high risk of COVID-19 infection should be able to wear medical masks, but isn’t it believe Demonstrators who wore masks were doing so for public health reasons, because many of them used ineffective cloth coverings and wearing masks on campuses was not as common prior to the protests.
“We can’t be selectively worried about only during protests,” Goldstein said. “If you’re at high risk, you probably shouldn’t be engaging in high-risk activities like large public gatherings.”
In New York, Democratic leaders say relaxed mask-wearing rules early in the pandemic have hindered policing. Addressing crime and anti-Semitism.
“We will not tolerate individuals using masks to avoid responsibility for criminal or threatening behavior,” Gov. Hokull said at a press conference this month, adding that he wanted to protect against wearing masks for “legitimate” reasons, such as protecting against COVID-19 and the flu.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (Democrat) He also signaled support for restrictive measures.
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, who supports mask regulations with public health exceptions, said a Jewish man wearing a kippah and walking past the Brooklyn Museum recently was harassed by a group of pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom were wearing masks, yelling, “Zionists are not welcome here.”
“They’re using masks to harass and intimidate,” said Bearman, founder of the local advocacy group Alliance for the Jewish Future.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, has urged retailers to require customers to remove their masks when entering stores to deter robberies. “I think now is the time to get back to the way things were before COVID,” Adams said in a radio interview this month.
But some New Yorkers have embraced masks as a healthy habit. In crowded cities with millions of people, people need to avoid airborne pathogens that can disrupt their lives.
Logan Grendell, a 46-year-old Harlem resident, credits regularly wearing a mask on the subway for helping him avoid contracting the respiratory illness since the pandemic began. “The fact that I didn’t wear a mask on the subway is astonishing to me,” Grendell said. Said.
Meredith Kang, a telemedicine psychotherapist in Manhattan who treats mostly people with immunocompromises and disabilities, said potential clients seeking mental health care are Hoekl and Adams urged people to limit mask wearing.
“The public is going to hear what the governor and mayor are saying: If you wear a mask, you’re a criminal,” Kang said. Due to his chronic condition, he receives weekly injections of immunosuppressants. “Our quality of life and ability to live in public are at stake.”
