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In the last 2 months, at least 10 patients have asked Constantine George, MD, for a written medical exemption so they won’t have to wear a mask in public. Dr. George, the chief medical officer of Vedius, an app for a travelers’ concierge medical service in Las Vegas, turned them all down.
Elena Christofides, MD, an endocrinologist in Columbus, Ohio, has also refused patients’ requests for exemptions.
“It’s very rare for someone to need an exemption,” says Albert Rizzo, MD, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association and a lung specialist at ChristianaCare Health System in Newark, Del.
The opposition is sometimes strong. Recently, a video of Lenka Koloma of Laguna Niguel, Calif., who founded the antimask Freedom to Breathe Agency, went viral. She was in a California supermarket, maskless, telling an employee she was breaking the law by requiring patrons to wear masks.
“People need oxygen,” she said. “That alone is a medical condition.” Her webpage has a “Face Mask Exempt Card” that cites the Americans with Disabilities Act and posts a Department of Justice ADA violation reporting number. The DOJ issued a statement calling the cards fraudulent.
Figuring out if a patient’s request to opt out of wearing a mask is legitimate is a ‘’new frontier” for doctors, says Mical Raz, MD, a professor in public policy and health at the University of Rochester (N.Y.), and a hospitalist at the university medical center.
Should some people skip masks?
Experts say there are very few medical reasons for people to skip masks. “If you look at the research, patients with COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder], those with reactive airway, even those can breathe through a mask,” Dr. George said. Requests for exemptions due to medical reasons are usually without basis. “Obviously, if someone is incapacitated, for example, with mental health issues, that’s case by case.”
Dr. Christofides said one of her patients cited anxiety and the other cited headaches as reasons not to wear a mask. “I told the one who asked for anxiety [reasons] that she could wear ones that were less tight.” The patient with headaches told Dr. Christofides that she had a buildup of carbon dioxide in the mask because of industrial exposure. Baloney, Dr. Christofides told her.
Dr. Rizzo says one rare example of someone who can’t wear a mask might be a patient with an advanced lung condition so severe, they need extra oxygen. “These are the extreme patients where any change in oxygen and carbon dioxide could make a difference,” he said. But “that’s also the population that shouldn’t be going out in the first place.”
Dr. Raz cowrote a commentary about mask exemptions, saying doctors are faced with difficult decisions and must keep a delicate balance between public health and individual disability needs. “Inappropriate medical exemptions may inadvertently hasten viral spread and threaten public health,” she wrote.
In an interview, she says that some people do have a hard time tolerating a mask. “Probably the most common reasons are mental health issues, such as anxiety, panic and PTSD, and children with sensory processing disorders (making them oversensitive to their environment). I think there are very few pulmonary reasons.”