| I can't wear masks due to a medical condition. For a while I just drove one state over to get groceries or ordered online for drive-up/pick up. I went to a restaurant with some friends last weekend. "Do you have a mask" I was asked, a clothes pin holding my t-shirt around my face. The server said, "We'll give you one," and when I said I had a medical condition. He said, "That's fine," and I was glad that was it ... but I still felt so awkward and filled with anxiety and shame, even at our table where they weren't required. I just saw all the wait staff around and it made me my focus narrow and want to panic. I think they have a negative mental effect and I think there's good scientific evidence they're not very useful: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-... I probably will just switch to drive-up pickup for groceries and only go to outdoor seating restaurants for the rest of the summer. We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE, and on top of that, there are thousands of people out there with PTSD and Anxiety disorders, with deep, personal, sometimes traumatic reasons, for being unable to wear a face covering. We're making people who refuse feel like they're killing grandma even though there is science that says that's unlikely. We're creating a new religious belief. A man in a Tim Horton's was pepper sprayed by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another Canadian man was shot by police. History will not look kindly back on this period of our humanity. |
I think this would happen anyway, because of psychological dynamics in group/societies (cases of public shaming, drives to and against conformism etc abound throughout history).
However in your particular case the issue is exacerbated by the fact that PPEs effectively became part of identity politics.
It's possible that quite a few people who are shaming you for not wearing a mask are doing so because they don't believe you're honest bout your medical condition and instead you're making this up in order to "stand your ground".
People are kinda silly; we all hope that people from "our side" of the political spectrum are not, but once identity politics dynamics kick in human beings tend to lose quite a bit of their rationality.