What legit medical reasons are there for not wearing a mask?
In: Biology
Some respiratory conditions, dementia and mental health, or some substantial disfigurement/physical factor which means a mask will not fit.
Well, except for some mental health issues (autism, schizophrenia, some OCD, anxiety issues,…) I don’t think that there are any physical reasons not to wear a mask since it don’t really affect the gaz you breathe.
Masks don’t stop CO2 from being expeled from your body, it just stops particles, viruses and bacterias. If you analyse the amount of CO2 and O2 with and without a mask, you can see that it don’t changes a lot.
The better ones I’ve heard are PTSD and claustrophobia.
Some people react very badly to having something over their face do to previous trauma, rape victims, kidnapping, etc.
Some people with these conditions can handle it, others freak out and stop functioning entirely.
Which is all the more reason everyone else should wear a mask because it helps protect the people that legit can’t.
You’re in the middle of a pandemic if you can’t wear a mask or refuse to in public stay home if you can.
Likely some forms of autism, some mental illnesses, severe allergies to components in some masks, emphysema or other severe respiratory issues, etc. A lot of these issues would also put a person more at risk of getting contaminated even with a mask, so these people should probably stay inside in controlled environments anyway.
copd? Also autistic children may just rip it off, not understand, and stuff.
An edge case everyone seems to be overlooking— they’ve found in a batch of cases that people with asymptomatic covid can still have pneumonia and significantly reduced lung function… they just don’t feel it, because covid is weird that way, and the oxygen deprivation doesn’t get bad enough for them to recognize they’re short of breath. But I’ve wondered what it feels like when someone in that condition wears a mask. And I don’t know how long the lung damage lasts after the virus is out of their system. If you put on a mask and find you’re having serious problems breathing when everyone else seems to be ok with it… might be a good reason to get checked out by a doctor.
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