This is a question I get asked a lot. The best practice is not to punish people with disabilities for the actions of others. But this is a common trope: we see this with healthcare access, welfare, housing. https://twitter.com/juliatpence/status/1355840472770605056

(Having sat with a sobbing disabled spouse who has been burdened for the dozenth time in a day with something painful, humiliating, or stressful because accessibility is typically designed to burdensome—yeah, it is punishment.)

"But this is a pandemic" you say. Yeah, but disabled folks get marginalized by non-pandemic policies too. Asking the people getting kicked in the face when you don't need them to show solidarity when you do need them is a dick move.

One small fix would be allowing face shields w/o masks. Shields have an associated reduction in risk of infection (they protect an additional mucosal surface even if less effective for inhalation). So you could still have your mandate and lessen the burden on disabled folk.

If you're really serious about mandates you could allow PCPs to print documentation for folks with disabilities who can't wear a mask. That's also incomplete. There will people who abuse it, But eliminating abuse by making it impossible to function if you're disabled is wrong.

Also, most people wear shitty masks. They don & doff them badly. Yes, even the "pro-science" folks. But I've not heard proposals to enforce mask *standards*. This policy is theater. We don't care—as a matter of policy—about the masks working, just that they are there.

But the other non-pharmaceutical intervention—and I can't stress this enough—is to use social supports to keep enough people home to drive down case counts. Countries around the world have managed this. It works. The US has not.

Let's put this in context - paying *every* person in American $1000/week for 8 weeks would cost $2.5 trillion. That's a hair more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But unlike the war in Iraq, paying everyone to stay home is a) not a crime; b) would actually save lives.

This why mask mandates, and this one in particular are so frustrating. They disproportionately assign burdens to vulnerable people. They are theater. And there are other solutions whose cost is parous with what this nation historically accepts for much less gain.