Proposed mask exemption process a sham
IT sounds like a sensible idea — to have an official exemption card for those who can’t wear a mask, so that, when entering places where they’re required, holders can show proof of exemption (which, unlike the cards issued at present by Blind Citizens New Zealand, the Disabled Persons Assembly, Deaf Aotearoa and other nongovernment organisations, will have legal backing) and won’t have to explain personal medical details.
From the end of May, people will be able to apply for a card through the Ministry of Health website and it will be issued to them digitally or by post.
Covid19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins and Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced ‘‘Covid19 orders will be amended to provide that the new card is conclusive proof that someone is exempt’’.
That will be true. If a legal process classifies someone as exempt from mask wearing then they are exempt. But the real issue is whether they should be exempt.
A number of doctors have questioned the proposed criteria for the new card, listed by the Health Ministry on the Government’s Covid19 website.
A Northland medical specialist said that the current list of criteria was so wide it was absurd — almost everyone in the country would qualify. ‘‘If we’ve made it so easy that literally anyone can click a box and say I have a ‘condition’ . . . we really have to ask: Is it still a public health measure?’’
With so many other measures relaxed, masks are one of the last lines of defence against the virus, so everyone who could wear one, should, he said.
Compromising one of the most effective public health measures wasn’t helping the community stay safe: ‘‘We want the right people to be protected by this law and we want masks to still be a meaningful way of reducing the burden of Covid in the community. If we make an exemption process so easy to get that it’s meaningless, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.’’
So what are these tickbox criteria?
The need to communicate regularly with someone who’s deaf or hard of hearing is obviously a valid reason (but only if that person is with the card carrier).
The penultimate category listed (the last is ‘‘None of these apply to me’’ — why’s that there?) seems to cover all personal medical reasons: ‘‘I have a physical or mental illness, condition or disability that means I am unable to wear a face covering’’.
But eight specific reasons ‘‘which make wearing a face covering difficult’’ are listed before that: being subject to asthma; skin irritation, eczema or sensitive skin; migraines; hay fever; dizziness, headaches, nausea or tiredness; dry eyes; and wearing hearing aids, glasses or contact lenses.
Civis uses glasses, has had migraines, has hay fever and skin sensitivity, gets short of breath walking uphill and is often tired, so would, it seems, qualify on six counts for exemption, but still manages to wear a mask, without difficulty other than misting of the glasses when singing, which clears as they warm up.
The process proposed lacks rigour, and achieves nothing.
If a doctor’s certificate, to confirm real problems would be caused by mask wearing, won’t be required (reducing the spread of a potentially fatal or longterm disabling disease apparently isn’t as important as deciding who has access to parking spaces for the disabled, but then the ministry has a long history of disregarding public health), why go through such a charade? To let the ministry delude itself it’s doing something?
If criteria aren’t tightened the rules might as well let anyone unable to wear a mask simply to say ‘‘I’m exempt’’ and make it illegal to question that statement.
That would avoid the pretence that the proposed card means something.
Trusting people to be truthful would emphasise that controlling the spread of Covid19 depends on the conscience of everyone able to wear a mask — more effective, perhaps, than a meaningless card.