We Are Witnessing Real Time Eugenics... and People Don't Seem to Care.

Mask bans and revocation of medical exemptions have been all over social media this week - and anti-maskers are reacting with glee. They are celebrating disabled people losing a tool for protection.

A few days ago I wrote a thread on Twitter/X about the proposal to ban masks in North Carolina. I incorrectly assumed there was an exemption for medically vulnerable individuals - and wrote about why I feel it’s unfair to put the burden of exemptions on people who are already struggling. I later found out the proposed bill intends to REMOVE the medical exemption completely.

Whenever I think things can’t get bleaker for disabled individuals - something happens to lower the bar. Hearing that mask bans are gaining in popularity and that at least one US State plans to remove medical exemptions was hard. Seeing all the people celebrating the possibility? Saying disabled people ‘deserve it’ for making them wear masks at the beginning of Covid? It’s broken me. We are living in the age of eugenics and most people either don’t see it - or worse - don’t care.

I’m someone who masked before the pandemic. I’m immune compromised with severe allergies and chemical sensitivities - and masks helped keep me safe and lessened my symptoms. People never cared before the pandemic. Now? They yell, mock & threaten to remove it. Some have even spit. There’s been documented violence against people who mask - such as the case of Will Keenan who permanently lost vision in his left eye after being viciously attacked for masking.

In hospitals, healthcare workers would see my mask and intuitively put one on themselves. Now it’s a battle where I have to carefully choose my words to avoid being labelled as “anxious” or “difficult”. Once you receive one of those labels your care can become compromised. I have to constantly weigh the threat of infection against the possibility my desire to avoid Covid will be psychologized.

The last glimmer of hope is that at least I CAN choose to wear a respirator. We’ve done away with all COVID mitigations in favour of chasing elusive herd immunity - leaving the individual with very few options beyond masking in all public spaces. And now governments want to ban that too. 

It’s bad enough that Covid mitigations are inherently a class issue - respirators are expensive, tests and treatments have been defunded, and other mitigations like HEPA filters, CO2 monitors and nasal sprays all cost money as well. Many people can’t afford to protect themselves. I firmly believe we would be in a much better place had we provided respirators free of charge to anyone who needed them - while aggressively upgrading indoor air quality in public spaces. Instead of doing that - we pushed a ‘you do you’ approach that’s left high risk individuals out in the cold. Forcing them to stay home or spend an awful lot of money trying to protect themselves from people who genuinely couldn’t care if they live or die.

People who are screaming that disabled and high risk individuals ‘deserve’ this ban are arguing that WE were the ones responsible for mask mandates. I would ask people to consider how ludicrous that argument is. Disabled people are NOT listened to by the government. We are treated as though we’re completely expendable and our opinions not considered. Most of us were completely isolated during the height of the pandemic (largely because many people refused to comply with measures that might have kept us safe). We certainly weren’t out enforcing mandates or accosting people who weren’t masking. If we had been consulted on pandemic policy I can all but guarantee we would be in a much better place right now. We would have lobbied for more accessible spaces for everyone and a more common sense approach to mitigation.

Our failed pandemic response means the government move to ban masks doesn’t surprise me. It’s the next logical step in what feels like a global eugenics plan. We are already seeing the rise of medically assisted death for disabled individuals in country’s like Canada - and the Covid narrative has always been that ‘only the vulnerable need to worry.’ As though the ‘vulnerable’ are completely expendable. Because to those in power - we are.

What surprised me was not the proposed bill - but the reaction of other people to the bill. I (perhaps foolishly) expected the people who screamed about freedom and bodily autonomy when forced to mask - to find mask bans inherently objectionable. Instead they were met with glee from people who think this is a ‘comeuppance’ for those they see as having forced them to wear masks at the height of the pandemic. It’s been heartbreaking.

I don’t understand why people can’t see the difference between a mask mandate and a mask ban. When masks were mandatory Covid was new and overwhelming hospitals. We didn’t have vaccines, we didn’t have treatments and we didn’t have clean air. 

Masks were mandated to protect people - to attempt to slow the spread. Would it have been better if we mandated respirators instead of cloth masks? Sure. But two way masking was effective and even eradicated an entire strain of flu. They worked to slow the spread. 

Mandates were dropped far too quickly because people were up in arms about their freedoms. They weren’t willing to do this small thing to protect those around them and they weren’t quiet about it. Governments caved and now we’re lucky if we see masks in high risk hospital settings. Many hospitals dropped masking - only to have Covid outbreaks and have to bring masking back. Despite this cycle repeating over and over… few hospitals opted to keep mandatory masking in place. This left disabled people feeling like they truly had nowhere left to go. The one place we have NO CHOICE but to access - became completely unsafe. Hospital acquired Covid has a fatality rate of close to 10% and still… we are told to ‘stop living in fear.’ We are denied adequate protections.

But the people who are so angry about mandates didn’t stop there. They’ve stigmatized, teased and taunted those of us who still mask. They’ve done everything they can to prevent us from normalizing this TOOL to protect ourselves and others.  

They’ve made it easy for governments to propose banning medical masks. When we cry out that this law could quite literally kill us? We’re gaslit and told it’s our own fault for supporting mandates in the beginning. That we are getting a taste of what they went through. 

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

It’s painful to listen to. It’s not even remotely the same. We aren’t asking others to mask. We aren’t running up to people in public and trying to force a mask on their face. We just want to be able to protect ourselves. We want the freedom to wear one. 

Yet these people who yelled about their freedoms nonstop for the last 4 years are currently laughing at the possibility we will lose the freedom to wear a medical mask. They’re telling us - once again - that if we don’t like it we should just stay home. They also refuse to acknowledge that not complying with mask mandates was never a criminal offence (that I’ve been able to find). It was treated like ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service.’ If you entered a public establishment without a mask you could be asked to leave and if you refused you could be arrested for trespassing. This is NOT the same as the proposed bill in North Carolina. It criminalizes the ACT of wearing a medical mask in public. Period.

Disabled people have compromised and sacrificed so much over the last 4 years. Every day it feels like another tool is taken away, accessibility further reduced & our agency stripped back. We are constantly told that we don’t deserve to survive. That we are acceptable losses. 

I’m so tired. I’m sad. I’m wondering where empathy and humanity have gone. Even IF you’re an anti-masker who believes you were treated inappropriately during mandates … since when did two wrongs make a right? Why do you insist on treating us badly in return? 

Why can’t people realize that disabled people didn’t create the policies they hate so much. We weren’t in the streets yelling at them for their choices. Most of us wouldn’t confront someone not masking for any reason. It’s too much of a risk. But we are the ones who are paying the price. As we’ve been doing over and over again for four years. 

I’ve always believed the adage that “hurt people hurt people” and I think that’s what we’re seeing now. People have unresolved trauma from the beginning of the pandemic - and they’re lashing out at disabled individuals because we’re the last reminder that Covid is NOT over.

We need to start healing and I don’t know how to make that happen. All I can do is share my story and the fact that I’m genuinely scared by the growing hatred and ableism in society. I can plead with people to consider whether their anger is aimed at the right group. To beg them to look around and see that we are witnessing eugenics in action - and disabled people are the canaries in the coal mine. It’s not going to stop with us. These policies should infuriate people and they should help us fight them.

If mandates upset you because you believe in freedom and bodily autonomy - then the idea of banning medical masks should upset you too. Taking away our only tool to protect ourselves from repeated infections is the ultimate violation in bodily autonomy .

Asking me to stay home forever or consent to infection with a disease that would likely kill me is wrong. Mandates are over and not coming back. Let us keep masking so we can keep safe. The idea of freedom and bodily autonomy should exist for ALL people - not just the healthy ones. 

For everyone else feeling hurt and scared - I’m right there with you. These proposed mask bans, the rise in medically assisted death, inaccessibility of healthcare, inequities of covid mitigation… it feels like the tip of the iceberg. It’s a slippery slope leading nowhere good.

Please remember that you’re not alone. That the disabled community is large in numbers and will continue to push back against ableism and eugenics. We invite others to join us - all health is temporary so help your future self create a better world for when you end up disabled or chronically ill yourself. You will be glad you did.

Copy of proposed bill on X via Victoria Coble

Link to petition to halt the passage of NC Bill 237