Why wear a mask to a protest?

Or: why spread illness when you could not do that?

Every month or so, the twitter wars start up again. Someone, often a disabled person, pointedly expresses their frustration that - yet again- leftists are gathering with few masks in sight, without guidance to require masking, and/or without distribution of free masks. This lack of COVID mitigation makes these spaces dangerous for immunocompromised people, people living with Long COVID, and everyone who is at risk of serious post-COVID health problems including long-term disability (that’s everyone!)

The backlash to these statements is usually loud, angry, mean, and often quickly degenerates into hateful rhetoric about disabled people generally. I don’t think I’ve ever posted a masked selfie without MAGA trolls mocking me, instructing me to die, informing me I’m scared, telling me I’m crazy, and absolutely fuming that I should stay in my house. Disturbingly, some of the leftist backlash to repeated requests for masks and disability justice praxis sounds remarkable similar to the MAGA folks’ go-to talking points.

Many leftist groups and organizers are apparently ignorant that rhetoric around disabled people being “lazy”, “useless,” “weak” and “a burden,” has a long history of being deployed in service to the removal and even murder of disabled populations. The normalization of such rhetoric and the mainstreaming of the idea that certain people do not have a right to access public spaces, to health, or to life itself, is always a slippery slope that leads to the targeting, harming and killing of other vulnerable groups.

So, in good faith I’m going to review why masks are critical praxis for protecting us all, then delve into some of the roots of anti-mask rhetoric, and finally discuss why, exactly, the refusal to wear masks (and the ongoing need to publicly mock those who do) is described as “eugenicist”.

1. COVID is a serious disease that carries a high risk of post-acute health problems and long-term illness.

We can’t talk about the need for masking without first addressing the biggest misconception much of the public has at this point: that it’s perfectly safe to repeatedly get infected with SARS-COV-2, indefinitely.

People who masked in 2020 and even into 2021 and ‘22 (mysteriously, since most of us were vaccinated by early 2021) claim that vaccines mean we can relax and stop trying to mitigate the spread of SARS-COV-2. This claim closely matches with claims that have been made by the Biden administration and his CDC, which has slowly stripped away critical protections like free tests, isolation periods, masking in healthcare, data collection, and free Paxlovid and vaccines. Their minimization of a virus we’re now expected to get 1-2 times every year accords well with their decision to strip away all public support and costly public mitigation.

People who typically mock the propagandist claims of the state’s talking heads in this case repeat them verbatim. The willingness of much of the organized left to fall in line with Biden’s pandemic denial and minimization has resulted in much greater social isolation of disabled and immunocompromised people than during the Trump era.

Here are some of the post-acute health effects that follow COVID infection:

• heart damage, with post-COVID patients at significantly higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, arrhythmias, and more

• organ damage, including kidney disease

• immune system damage, including dendritic cell deficiencies and complement system dysfunction

• endothelial dysfunction / blood vessel damage

• neurological damage, shrinkage of brain volume, brain fog and other outcomes “including headaches, seizure disorders, strokes, sleep problems, and tingling and paralysis of the nerves”. Increased risk of dementia. Cognitive damage measured in the studies at the link found a loss of cognition equivalent to 3 IQ points after a mild infection, 6 points after a severe infection, and 9 points after hospitalization

• higher risk of autoimmune disease “including rheumatoid arthritis systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren syndrome, mixed connective tissue disease, vasculitis, and other conditions”

• higher risk of metabolic disorders including diabetes

• higher risk of mental health disorders including anxiety, depression, and ADHD

These are not rare effects. These are common effects that many people are noticing in themselves or the people around them, while failing to connect them to COVID-19 because of deliberately poor public health communication. Most of us know people who have developed a new autoimmune disease, reported more viral and bacterial illness than usual, lost hair, started having migraines, mentioned “brain fog” or notice a reduced ability to study or work out. Most of the online left is familiar with stories of young people suddenly dying of strokes, heart attacks, or blood clots recently while usually failing to connect this to COVID infections. The science is clear: every COVID infection increases your risk of these outcomes. Five COVID infections are more dangerous than three; ten infections are more dangerous than five.

Right now the CDC has no plan for the public other than to reinfect you every year.

Dr. Al-Aly, a doctor, scientist and researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is a great resource for accurate information about post-COVID health effects. His large studies about the post-COVID health effects (also called “sequelae”) have consistently found that risks of COVID infection are cumulative. That means an approach of continual reinfection is both unsustainable and misguided. He recently testified before Congress about the Long COVID crisis and wore a high-quality mask while doing so.

For more studies about the long-term effects of COVID, you can visit this library of COVID studies.

Contrary to the minimizing rhetoric of the Biden administration, vaccines reduce but do not eliminate any of the above long-term risks. A late 2022 study found that vaccination reduced risk of Long COVID by 35%. Vaccines are worth getting, certainly; they have also dramatically reduced acute deaths from COVID. However, they are not good protection against infection, death is not the only negative outcome of COVID, and most people are not up to date with their COVID shots. We also should talk, specifically, about Long COVID.

2. People with Long COVID represent a large and growing demographic group, and disability numbers are rising.

COVID carries a high risk of post-acute health problems, and most people have had COVID multiple times at this point. Therefore, many people are living with significant, new onset health problems, and struggling to find any guidance or support.

Long COVID is an umbrella term; technically, the definition is simply whether you have ongoing symptoms past the three-month mark. That makes the condition difficult to explain and describe. Minimizing rhetoric has purposely muddied the water about what living with Long COVID means and how it feels. Many people do not know that Long COVID exists at all; others believe it is imaginary or a mental illness. Others seem to think it is simply an annoyance rather than a life-changing and potentially deadly illness.

Again, the seriousness of Long COVID has purposely been obfuscated from the public. Long COVID absolutely has biomarkers (objective measurements in the blood that differ from a “healthy” person) that researchers continue to identify.

These include:

• Viral persistence - the body is not fully clearing the SARS-COV-2 virus

• Microclots in the blood and endothelial dysfunction

• Immune system dysregulation

• Mitochondrial damage leading to severe fatigue and exercise intolerance

• Blood-brain barrier disruption

These markers are serious, physical, observable disruptions causing significant persistent symptoms which can result in disability and leave patients homebound and even bedbound. As of August 2022, the Brookings Institute reported a total of 16 million Americans with Long COVID; 2-4 million of them too sick to work at all. The CDC’s own, more recent, data found that 6.8% of Americans are currently suffering from Long COVID, or approximately 24 million people. That is a very large population of people to knowingly exclude from left organizing and left spaces- forget the reality that in an ideal world, no one would have unmet access needs in left spaces.

Federal Reserve Economic Data shows that the number of disabled people in the labor force has increased an astonishing 33% since 2020. Recent ONS data from the UK confirms that these trends are not confined to the US, with massive increases in disability and long-term illness numbers now linked to economic decline.

A left that does not even attempt to address millions of newly-disabled people who have been harmed and then abandoned by the state, many of whom are falling into economic duress and even homelessness, is unserious. A left that actively contributes to the spread of the illness and mocks those attempting to mitigate it, is dangerous.

3. Vulnerable people are still dying of COVID. Yes, even vaccinated ones.

While deaths have been significantly reduced by vaccination (and the fact that over a million vulnerable people are already dead), COVID is still by far the most deadly infectious disease in the nation and has killed over 1,000 Americans per week for the past 6 months. Over 10,000 Americans died of COVID in January 2024 alone.

It’s interesting how often people cite “CDC guidance” as their reason for unmasking. Although the CDC has absolutely participated in and cosigned the mainstream minimizing of the illness, even the CDC still acknowledges that vulnerable people are at risk from COVID infection. They simply encourage the public to let those people die.

During an interview with the BBC in the fall, Dr. Fauci famously said aloud “You’ll find the vulnerable will fall by the wayside. They’ll get infected, they’ll get hospitalized, and some will die.” Should he have characterized any other vulnerable group this way (“You’ll find Native people will fall by the wayside,” “You’ll find trans people will fall by the wayside,” “You’ll find Black people will fall by the wayside,” “You’ll find women will fall by the wayside”) there would surely have been an almighty backlash. But to say medically vulnerable people must die so the rest of us may have brunch indoors does not beget such a reaction- never mind that all the above-named groups- Native people, trans people, Black people and women- are at a higher risk for Long COVID, and other poor outcomes from COVID.

“The vulnerable” is a purposely vague and broad term. Most people do not feel it includes them. Our media has been careful to consistently reinforce the framing that “most people” are fine after COVID- and everyone considers themselves “most people.” It is a neat little rhetorical trick. It’s why you’ll find that many people who are themselves vulnerable do not mitigate- they simply believe the bad outcomes will happen to “someone else.”

By the CDC’s definition, people over 65 are at increased risk of serious outcomes from COVID. So are people with asthma, people with autoimmune disorders, people with ADHD, depression, and other mental health disorders, people who are overweight, pregnant people, and smokers, among many others.

Lastly, we should be certain to stress that while vaccinated people were not dying in early 2021, the rapid mutation of the virus and the equally rapid waning of antibody protection meant that by the winter of 2021-22, the first omicron wave, over 40% of those who died were vaccinated. By the following summer, it was nearly 60%. During this time, Biden’s team continued to refer to ongoing COVID deaths as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” purposely obscuring the waning efficacy of the vaccines.

COVID’s rapid evolution and the way rapid mutation harms the efficacy of the vaccines has never been well explained to the public. The vaccines we were given in early 2021 instructed our body how to make a spike protein- specifically, the spike protein of the currently predominant variant. When Delta hit, we began to see more breakthrough infections because Delta had so many mutations on the spike protein. Our bodies did not recognize the new, evolved spike protein as easily, because it looks different and is harder for the body to recognize. Omicron had several dozen more mutations, and so on and so forth.

Vaccine makers attempted to deal with this faster-than-expected mutation by updating the shots with new strains of COVID. But the evolution continues to outpace the shots; this winter, the few people who were boosted received a vaccine for the XBB variant. By the time they were available, the dominant variant was a highly-mutated descendant- JN.1.

Of course, it doesn’t help that after years of minimizing propaganda, people simply aren’t getting the vaccines. By failing to explain why viral evolution necessitates new shots, or that the antibody protection from the vaccines wanes more rapidly than we’d hoped, the CDC set up their booster campaigns to fail. As of this past week, only 22% of adults and 13% of American children had received a COVID booster- which might more accurately be called the XBB vaccine.

4. Yes, COVID can spread outdoors

COVID - because of uncontrolled, unmitigated spread- has continued to evolve to become more fit and over time has become increasingly contagious. With these new variants, it is increasingly possible to get COVID outdoors.

It’s absolutely true that COVID is much less likely to spread outdoors than indoors, and risk is not high when you’re keeping your distance from others. You’ve got great air flow, and CO2 levels that we should be striving for in indoor spaces. While some COVID-conscious people always mask outdoors, I personally do not always do so. However, I do consistently mask up at protests and in crowds, for the obvious reason that being packed into a dense area with many people who are all shouting drastically increases that infection risk.

It’s important to note just how high COVID levels are during surges- and just how often we find ourselves in surges. As of February 5, infectious disease modeler JP Weiland used the most recent Biobot wastewater data to estimate a million new cases still occuring daily- and a staggering 1 in 33 Americans currently infected. COVID typically peaks at least twice in a year, with a significant summer surge, unlike the flu and other seasonal diseases. This is due, again, to high rates of evolution and shorter periods of immunity.

5. Not everyone has paid sick leave and other social safety net benefits

This one is pretty basic! It is surely important to acknowledge that some people will be grievously harmed by COVID- even people who have initial mild infections- but there are also the smaller, day-to-day harms of illness. The CDC just announced further reductions in COVID isolation guidance, and employers are already using said guidance to claw back any paid sick leave on offer since 2020. And of course, many workers have no paid sick time at all.

Additionally, many people cannot afford childcare or to take off work for their sick kids, may not have health insurance or access to treatments like Paxlovid, and may be in public-facing positions which will result in further community spread.

It is simply bad praxis to not employ basic infection mitigation wherever possible when COVID cases are rampant all year round.

As to why I did not wear masks prior to COVID, there are two reasons: first, COVID represents an extreme added social disease burden well beyond that of the flu. Flu does not carry the post-acute risks of COVID, and most adults contract the flu only twice a decade. A recent preprint looking at immune evasion of the currently predominate variant, JN.1, found “protection wanes rapidly and is entirely lost one year after the previous infection.” So, the burden of COVID, were it a flu (it’s not), would still be like the introduction of five new flus. circulating year-round. The other reason: I did not know masks prevented illness, and even official guidance claimed that most common viruses were droplet spread (it turns out they are airborne, too).

6. Sick people can’t organize

On a personal note, I will mention that I got COVID in November from a houseguest, at which point I had attended several Palestine protests (masked). I was unable to attend protests again for several months because my acute COVID infection lasted nearly a month, and afterward I struggled with post-COVID health issues including being unable to stand or walk for long periods due to shortness of breath. I am a single person, but incapacitating your organizers and supporters for even short periods of time is an unnecessary loss.

7. Disability justice is an important part of our work!

Disability justice intersects with racial justice, gender justice, economic justice, environmental justice; it all intersects and disability justice is surely not the exception! I encourage all leftists to dig deeper and follow disabled activists and authors like Alice Wong, who recently authored this piece for Teen Vogue about her inability to access public spaces including healthcare, and how masking up could save her life. Dr. Steven Thrasher is another writer I recommend, and his book The Viral Underclass should be required reading for leftist organizers eager to meet this moment.

Disabled activists were critical figures in the fight to preserve the ACA and have been the backbone of the movement for universal, free healthcare. This brings me to my next point:

8. Lack of disability justice is driving many people out of left spaces

This fall, DSA announced budget problems. As the article at the link states:

DSA has seen “dues income being significantly lower than anticipated,” explained Lewis, as membership decreases. According to Lewis, DSA has 74,000 constitutional members, with 55,000 members in good standing, and “every month this year we’ve posted a loss of membership.

Of course, I have not seen survey data to indicate why DSA is hemorrhaging members, but this accords well with my personal experience, and I found it not at all surprising. Although I was never a dues-paying member, I infrequently attended DSA meetings prior to COVID with friends. Currently, I would never consider setting foot in an organizing space without a mask requirement, nor will I volunteer for your candidate or cause. I already know my health is not cared for in that space, and that the comfort of abled people is valued more highly than the lives of disabled people. As for my two close friends in DC who I attended the meetings with- both of them stopped paying dues. Both of them stopped participating due to their anger over the lack of COVID mitigations, discussion, and organizing. Both of them submitted this information to DSA. In fairness, I will applaud DSA’s National Convention for implementing a mask requirement this year, after significant pushback from their Disability Caucus.

It also does not surprise me that many members of the Squad have reported fundraising difficulties over the past several years.

It may be difficult for left groups to see the impact their COVID minimization and ignorance has had on their membership because those who take COVID seriously simply do not feel safe to attend.

9. Reducing the stigma of mitigation and demonstrate solidarity

Because of the full-court press of normalization, masking is not simply a “you do you” prospect anymore. Maskers are being mocked, as mentioned, but also harassed and even attacked. When you continually appear in public unmasked, you are communicating that masking is unnecessary and difficult, and that those who will suffer from COVID infection do not concern you. When you continually mock those who do mask, you are communicating that masking is weird and “crazy”. Every abled person who is able, yet refuses to do their part to slow the spread of COVID-19, is not only participating in chains of infectious disease spread that kill and disable others, they are also contributing to a culture of normalizing disabled death and stigmatizing those fighting back. I should also add that white people are consistently the least likely to mask in surveys.

Search twitter for any masked selfie and read the comments. You will see- mostly MAGA trolls- openly calling for masked people to be killed. You will generally not see prominent leftists with large platforms pushing back by encouraging masking and practicing it themselves. The incredibly limited adoption of masking puts a target on the back of those who do it- and they are disproportionately the most vulnerable among us.

10. Fight the surveillance state

Others have pointed out that cops and the state are hellbent on peeling masks off of faces due to their illegal and unconstitutional targeting of peaceful protestors and leftist organizers. Just this week, DC passed its disastrous Omnibus Crime bill that seeks to criminalize facial coverings, and other countries, states and cities have pursued similar measures. Leftists already failed to rise to the occasion when millions were kicked off Medicaid under Joe Biden; it was accomplished with barely a protest. Will they organize against the mask bans that would be a death sentence to many?

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This list is hardly exhaustive. But it should be sufficient to convey the urgency of mitigation, the unsustainability of continual COVID reinfection for any human, and the importance of education and awareness raising. Personally, I am now involved in the DC-area Mask Bloc; this group has been attending protests and distributing thousands of free masks. Such groups have popped up all over the world and are doing the difficult and often thankless work of distributing free, high-quality masks, tests, and information. To me, they are the exciting new frontier of the left. More exciting would be the inclusion of this work in more established spaces, by more powerful groups and individuals.

Anti-mask rhetoric has its origins in the broader anti-public health movement bankrolled by shadowy libertarian billionaires. Allowing this rhetoric to move into the mainstream is dangerous for public health for reasons that extend well beyond COVID alone. In the wake of the mainstreaming of antivax misinformation like “viruses are good for your immune system”- pushed by the media and adopted by the public in order to handwave away their children’s noticeably declining health- we are seeing a resurgence in measles and now mumps. Embracing masks, as well as ventilation and filtration, as practical tools to mitigate disease spread might’ve prevented these outbreaks. Instead, we’re facing down a future where many if not most adults think disease mitigation is actively harmful.

The move to frame the requirement of a public safety measure- no different from requiring seatbelts, helmets, pants and shoes in public- as a violation of bodily autonomy came directly from groups like the Atlas Network, which, as you might gather from its Ayn-Rand-worshipping name, opposes all public regulation. Meanwhile, we continue to violate the bodily autonomy of disabled people by making participation in public life contingent on accepting forcible, continual reinfections.

Since Biden’s COVID normalization campaign, MAGA-style rhetoric about how disabled people should “stay home forever” and how they are “useless” and “weak” has absolutely infiltrated left spaces. Many disabled people, in fact, are effectively “staying home forever.” They are shielding themselves from a disease that may kill them, and certainly would likely lower their baseline health, and have been for years. Meanwhile, the pleas of these incredibly isolated people for the bare minimum of solidarity- please at least mask up indoors when not eating or drinking- are ignored because that is apparently too difficult for the mental health of abled people.

If you haven’t checked out the public forums where Long COVID patients share their experiences, it’s worth trying to understand exactly how isolating it would be to have a brand-new disability that people- even former political allies- are ignoring or even mocking. To be incredibly ill and yet unable to rely on even your closest friends and family members to stop deliberately exposing you to the virus. Worth noting that a recent Canadian study found that risk of Long COVID continues to rise with more infections.

As I alluded to above and have discussed in other pieces, the Nazi party rose to power in the wake of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that carried a long tail of disability and illness. In 2020, CNN noted that, “the relative impact of the flu was correlated to strength in support for Nazism.” Further, disabled people were the first targets of the mass execution campaigns of the Nazis. Public propaganda labeled disabled people “useless eaters” (which sounds more and more familiar these days), and the eugenicist murders of disabled people led to the development of Aktion 4, later used to murder Jews and other “undesirable” groups in concentration camps. At least 300,000 disabled people were killed throughout the Holocaust.

It may seem a massive leap to go from discussing masking to state-sanctioned murder. But truthfully, the lack of masks in many settings is a form of social murder, and is already leading to the deaths of disabled people. What worries me in the comments I read from (some) self-identified leftists is an extreme amount of vitriol, othering, and hatred that consistently accompanies the justification of violence against marginalized groups. Disabled people asking for masking - again, because an infection could kill them - are labeled mean, crazy, annoying, weird, insane, useless, ugly, stupid, bizarre, paranoid, etc. Many of these words are ableist in and of themselves; but the need to group together all the people requesting masks into a singular “type” of person- a bad type of person that does not really deserve access to our spaces- is why many disabled activists are identifying this language as concerning and dangerous and yes, eugenicist. People are not engaging with the substance of the critique- make your spaces accessible- and are instead creating mental justifications for excluding disabled people. They are too annoying. They are too mean. They are not worth protecting.

A last point I will address, I did see questions about how we are supposed to “force” people to mask. Disabled people, vulnerable people, and left groups generally do not have the power of the state. We are not going to be engaging in “policing,” because nobody is going to end up in jail, physically hurt, on probation, or with limited job prospects because of our community care. Simply write “masks required” on your event invites, distribute masks wherever possible (contact your local Mask Bloc!), and do your best to spread information while modeling good praxis by masking yourself. For the most part, people are following the crowd. They will do what the majority is doing, and many will be happy to mask if it is normalized instead of stigmatized.

A left that purges its spaces of everyone who values community care, everyone who is willing to experience a minor inconvenience for the well-being of another, everyone who thinks it’s all of us or none of us, is a drastically weakened left. A left that does not incorporate disability praxis is drastically limiting its own scope and ability to be effectual. A left that mocks vulnerable groups and seeks to justify harm to them is not grounded in real justice and has only a superficial understanding of its own aims. Join us in masking, keep your comrades safe, and relish the beauty of avoiding illness while knowing you did your part to protect others. It’s a good feeling at the end of the day, I promise you that.