Keep Masks in Health Care

I gave a short speech on April 16, 2024 in front of the San Francisco Department of Public at a protest organized by Senior and Disability Action. We called SFDPH to keep in place Health Order 2023-01b, which requires that personnel in healthcare settings wear masks. This health order is a crucial protection for the San Francisco community amid the ongoing pandemic. They currently plan on ending the requirement on April 30, 2024.

I have very strong feelings about this as a high-risk disabled person who went through a horrible experience at the hospital in January. Below are my remarks.

Hey everyone, I’m really glad to be with you all today. We are living in a wild time, eh? There’s so many scary things out there–the bird flu, RSV, measles, and COVID just to name a few airborne pathogens. We can catch and easily transmit them to our family, friends, and colleagues. Not only can we get infected and die from these illnesses, we can become debilitated and end up with life long complications. For example, people who get COVID, even a mild case, can develop long covid. And multiple COVID infections over time can increase the risk for long covid, a condition that doesn’t have a treatment. It seems like everyone wants to get back to normal and wearing masks is considered abnormal and unnecessary. We know that a mask such as a N95 can protect a person from infectious diseases and this is especially important when some of them can be spread by people who don’t have any symptoms. Masks shouldn’t be political, but they are. For me, a mask is a symbol of love. You see, I am a high risk disabled person who has a tracheostomy in my neck which is connected to a ventilator that pushes breaths of air into my lungs. The air that enters my ventilator behind my wheelchair goes through a filter that doesn’t provide the same protection as a N95. Since I can’t breathe through my nose or mouth, wearing a mask isn’t effective. I depend on the people around me, such as all of you, to protect me. We are interdependent on one another. We keep each other safe. We share a collective responsibility to not expose germs to one another instead of putting all the responsibility on an individual. In the last few years it’s been clear that public health has abandoned the most marginalized and vulnerable. The President, CDC, and major institutions want us to think the pandemic is over, that we can return to normal and keep the engine of capitalism running at any cost. The cost is people who continue to die or become disabled from COVID. In an interview to the BBC Dr. Anthony Fauci said, quote, “Even though you’ll find the vulnerable will fall by the wayside, they’ll get infected, they’ll get hospitalized, and some will die. It’s not going to be this tsunami of cases that we’ve seen.” End quote. I am one of those people who will fall by the wayside and I guess the number of deaths from covid only matter if you are young, healthy, and nondisabled. Well, eff that. We are not acceptable losses. We are not outliers in your data set. We are not disposable. Many of us are doing our best individually while the state and institutions such as schools and hospitals have the resources to improve ventilation and make other changes but choose not to. Meanwhile there are people out there who think mask wearers are hysterical and that it’s inevitable that everyone will end up getting COVID but that’s ok because it’s mild. And serious cases only happen to people with pre-existing conditions and too bad for them. You know what? We are so much more than a number, a diagnosis, a burden on the healthcare system. Older, sick, immunocompromised, and disabled people work so hard just to stay alive and exist in the same space as everyone else. I’m exhausted, aren’t you? I’m exhausted by all the ableism. And I’m enraged we even have to come out here and demand the San Francisco Department of Public Health continue the requirement that personnel in healthcare settings wear masks. No one should risk their lives when they have to go to the hospital or to a clinic for dialysis or chemotherapy. The bar is so low with this request, they just have to continue as usual, they don’t have to do anything. Days like this make me feel like I’m in a dystopian zombie apocalypse where we have to beg the fascist authorities to listen to us before it’s too late. The reality is we are not a society based on care. If we value people over profits, care over capital; if we center the wisdom of the most marginalized and vulnerable, if we believe in the power of community, we could survive this plague and coexist with the zombies among us. Ha ha ha. But seriously, disabled wisdom is the answer; it is the way forward. The question is if SF DPH is listening. Thanks.