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Mask Wearing: Must it Be So Complicated?
While some people comply with wearing masks with a degree of resignation, others are angry and frustrated when required to wear them, as the controversy about the need to wear them drags on. But for some families, mask-wearing is especially difficult for 
certain children with autism. I suspect that other conditions also create emotional and physical difficulties when wearing masks. In particular, the Ross family with a seven-year old daughter with sensory processing disorder as a result of her autism traveled to Disney World.
Understanding a little more about sensory processing disorder might be helpful. The condition and its manifestations can vary from child to child, and includes (but isn’t limited to) not wanting to be touched, eating only certain foods, wearing only particular clothes or cutting the tags out of their clothes, or having meltdowns in crowded public places. As an example, a balloon popped when the Ross family were at a local fair and the daughter was triggered and ran into a four-lane highway nearby. The potential for this extreme behavior requires ongoing management.
Originally the family planned to go to Disney World in September 2019, but Richard Ross was in an industrial accident and they rescheduled for this summer. They had acquired medical exemptions to the wearing of a mask for their daughter and assumed the exemptions would be accepted.
They were wrong.
Their daughter was denied access to restaurants at the Disney Resort and into the Magic Kingdom. The workers insisted that everyone had to wear a mask and there were no exceptions. Mr. Ross asked if they were refusing to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the worker stated it wasn’t the issue. Mr. Ross tried to appeal to various managers at the restaurants, at their hotel and near the parks, and employees insisted that they were working on the problem. By Saturday, the family made the decision to return home. (They had arrived late Thursday night.) The incident raises the question: who was to blame?
* * * * *
There is plenty of blame to go around. Let’s start with the governments’ pressures to comply with mask-wearing. Cities, counties, states, and the federal government all have different and constantly changing rules. Then we can ask whether Disney should have been better prepared for those people who have difficulty wearing masks. (Disney has tried to accommodate children with emotional difficulties in the past, but canceled the effort after people tried to pass their children off as having those conditions.) Or should people simply be denied access (like at any other business) due to the strict mask-wearing rules? Finally, we can ask whether Mr. Ross should have done a better job of checking out roadblocks and requirements, given his daughter’s condition, and confirmed whether the medical exemptions would have been adequate.
There are also people with other conditions that might compromise their ability to wear a mask. What about them?
* * * * *
Whom do I hold responsible? Everyone. We have a power-hungry government that, at the very least, has gone overboard in making mask-wearing demands. We also live in a society that expects to be accommodated when they have limitations they have to cope with, rather than their taking responsibility for the limitations they may encounter. And we also have businesses that are desperate to accommodate customers but also want to be responsible for their requirements of them.
What can we do to find our way out of this madness?
Published in Culture
It was a far saner world when the only access to power these people had was spouting off at HOA meetings.
I’m literally sitting in a virtual workshop, and we are talking about wearing of masks, and those who need exceptions.
What is sad is how many will use medical channels to get a faux exception. It is so sad that this has become politicized.
Masks can help slow the spread. Some people can’t wear masks. Kids should not be wearing masks in a full day of school. It is very difficult to re-imagine and re-organize schools to fulfill all the needs, but there we are with the IDEA laws, and we have to figure out a way.
I considered showing more sympathy for the parents and their dilemma in this situation. But I couldn’t get past the father not checking ahead with Disney. I also can’t imagine how difficult it is to raise his daughter.
Interesting, @julespa! I agree with all you say. I don’t have easy answers–it’s beyond my pay grade. But especially when kids are involved, we have to find a way. Thanks!
I agree. The parents really should have checked. But, Disney made an error, because this will be a PR nightmare.
It’s not complicated in all.
In a saner world the 95% of people who can wear a mask during the pandemic would. And everyone would be happy to accommodate the 5% who have a problem.
Instead both sides have politicized the issue and now we get demands for “muh Freeeeedddooooom!’ from one side and “National Mask Mandates mein Fuhrer!” from the other side.
A pox on both.
@kozak, I kind of think insanity can make things complicated. Don’t you?
It’s all a “managing expectations” problem. Too many people place more faith in a mask than the should as a preventive for disease. Government makes over broad pronouncements in a desire to maximize use, and uses the “exception” to make an arbitrary rule just a little less arbitrary so that they can disclaim being the source of the problem. Karens use government pronouncements to exercise their “virtue muscles”. Some people let government pronouncements to scare them spitless about people not wearing masks and the risk that that represents to themselves. And few people wear masks in ways that optimizes whatever good they do for you and others and avoid risking different respiratory ailments that can accompanying prolonged mask wearing.
Stop electing people of the left. Withdraw from those places they control. Not satisfactory, but it’s all we can do. They can’t be fixed – once the condition takes hold, only pain and loss can cure it.
The only way out is thru it, straight ahead. There’s no alternative to pushing the damn boulder back up the hill, again. The best we can aim for is a solid two generations of good education and moral training, while we somehow hold the mob in check.
I agree! Cajoling, pleading, using reason–all a waste of time. I’m with you, @barfly!
No, the insanity just makes it look complicated.
Sue the son of a guns. Sue them hard. Every state mandate, however lawless, acknowledges medical exceptions because it MUST. Sue Eisner and Disney hard. Period.
But science? Sorry “science” says children don’t spread this virus to adults, unlike the seasonal flu and colds. Oh, I’m sure we’ll be treated to labcoat leftist lies packaged as “science” falsely claiming kids kill adults with the Chinese virus, but we may presume it will be lies crafted for November political victory and subsequent permanent rule dressed in faux elections.
With all respect, how do you know that?
This is insanely provocative.
I’m in Pennsylvania. We have a “mandate” from our governor (Tom Wolf (in sheep’s clothing)) that masks are required in certain circumstances. The governor’s website said, on July 5, that “Sec. of Health Dr. Rachel Levine signed an order mandating mask-wearing on Wednesday.” (I don’t think that’s what the intent actually is–that we only wear masks on Wednesday. I think that’s a bit of misdirection, similar to that of our “Sec. of Health,” zirself, who was born with the name, “Richard.” So I’m cutting him/her some slack, and wearing a mask any day of the week that I’m in close quarters and can’t social distance among strangers.
It’s not complicated for me. I don’t wear one around the farm. I don’t wear one on my walk. I do wear one when I’m shopping, or when I enter an establishment that says “masks are required.” Or when I’m around someone who asks me to. I gather, from some of the business owners I’ve spoken to, that there are some snitches, of the official and unofficial varieties, who are reporting back to HQ on compliance, and I don’t want to put my friends, or even local business owners I don’t know, at a disadvantage because I didn’t comply. (It doesn’t make me feel particularly “small” or “oppressed” to comply. I have bigger fish to fry in my life. And anyway, I have some lovely, pretty, funny, and hilarious, masks I’ve made for myself.)
I’ve only been present for one marginally ugly incident in which a man and his wife (who had an unrelated ax to grind apparently) came into the antique store where I was trying to buy a small 19th century dresser, refused to put on masks, insisted that they both had a “medical exemption” and then when the business owner asked to see it, read from a printout of standard boilerplate that wasn’t specific to them, and made rather a scene. It was awkward. And I felt bad for the business owner, because she, and all others, are between a rock and a hard place–she’s not a convinced “maskophile” herself, but she doesn’t want her business shut down because she’s not following the order.
I’m not convinced that masks make all that much of a difference when it comes to the spread of something like COVID-19. And I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, that I wish our efforts were spent more in looking at and finding creative ways to protect those who are actually most at risk from his horrible virus. But we are where we are, and it is what it is.
I’ll continue to do what I must do in order to be able to go where I need and want to go. And I’ll continue to speak my mind. But I’m not going to be a jerk about it, like the couple in the antique store. That isn’t the right way to go about it.
I agree with all you say, @she, especially the points I copied here. I think our priorities are messed up, because if people are wearing masks, everyone knows that the government is behind it (for the most part) and the leaders think they get points. I hope by now we are taking care of those who need care, but that’s not obvious to everyone, so it tends to stay in the background. I, too, wear my mask without a fuss; life is just too short to give people grief. And for that couple–they should carry legitimate exemption papers if they want to be taken seriously, rather than causing trouble. Thanks!
Why do we want to slow the spread again? I thought we wanted to flatten the curve.
We did that. Now let’s get the spread over with, no? Take off these pathetic, jokey “masks” and let’s move on.
It isn’t the issue, but it might be a lawsuit.
I think the mask wearing should be made optional for everyone. Exceptions? Possibly medical facilities where infected people might show up. Nursing homes? Don’t know, but maybe temporary measures whenever there is the spread of something nasty.
Well, when have we ever lived in a sane world?
I’d love to live in your sane world, but once it became about showing off how much power you have over the peasants, it was doomed. Also, the fact that the predictions of doom failed to occur, and there was no acknowledgement of success, people stopped listening to scientific evidence and just screamed as loud as possible.
Oh, but, @omegapaladin, the predictions of doom are announced every day! More cases here, more school closings there! You must pay attention! Although I must say I’ve been tempted many times to scream as loud as possible myself. Or cover my ears and yell, “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”
If you are afraid or have some medical condition (why weren’t you wearing one before?) then wear one. If you are not afraid then don’t. Don’t get me started on why people don’t try to make me comfortable, they don’t. We are being set up to wear them at all times forever. That’s not how I want my grandchildren to live.
Mask-wearing in a restaurant is nothing more than compliance kabuki theater: That your magic snot rag will not leave a particulate trail on the way to the restroom, that the passage of time in any shared air-conditioned space will not be a factor when the mask is off to eat and that the guys back in the kitchen are not constantly mask-cheating just to be able to breathe in the heat.
Schools can open but only with lots of magical, useless permutations of the six-foot rule. You can go to the mega-store but not to buy garden tools. You must wear a mask to hike alone in sunlight on a desert trail but not inside with family and friends.
These are We Are All In It Together gestures by officials who feel enormous pressure to Do Something About It.
Why can’t we just tie [insert a color not yet associated with a cause]-colored ribbons around trees or have 6K runs for a cure or just some uplifting unity messages from actors in PSAs between commercials? Why do we have to fake it like this?
Granny should have been in quarantine while the rest of us tried to catch the bug and get it over with to build that invincibly immune herd around her so that Granny could come back out. Pointless half-measures in the name of protecting Granny are increasingly enraging.
The masks are not complicated enough. There should be specifications, ASTM, tolerances, materials, etc. if they are to be any good. A cloth covering is a wide variation of protection, and quite possibly works against sanitation measures. The paint mixer at Home Depot the other day had a ladies’ sheer scarf over her face. I could see her nose, yet, viola! a face covering.
You can get covid19 like my daughter’s best friend did wearing both a mask and shield when working with a covid patient in rehab; the only contact with covid she had.
Donald Henderson, who led the world in eliminating small pox, wrote a paper under GW, where basically the best management is where community conducts itself as normally as possible. Surprise, staying home when you are sick, coughing/sneezing into disposable kleenex or sleeve, and the most important? Washing with soap and water.
I agree. And I could be considered Granny (at 70). Walking around at BJ’s and Publix today, I still feel like I’m living in a different dimension. I really hate not being able to see people’s expressions. It’s so isolating. Thanks, @oldbathos.
Who’da thunk? Nah, common sense could not possibly apply. Thanks, @ralphie.
Is Covid infection inevitable? If the answer is “yes”, then masks achieve nothing except possibly slow things down.
Outside of government/police, the task of enforcing rules is usually delegated to young employees and/or volunteers with minimal training making minimum wage (if that). It’s probably unreasonable to expect such people to be well-versed on the Americans With Disabilities Act.
…
Reading through the Act, I see there’s an exception for requirements, “that an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals in the workplace.”
But maybe their supervisors should have talked with the customers and addressed that concern. Almost everyone stalled on giving a reasonable response. And maybe the ADA should be included, instead of gender diversity programs.