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by Dr. Simone Gold M.D.
Author’s note: The below is the Op-Ed that was accepted to USAToday on June 24. They deleted key phrases/paragraphs for their print paper and then they refused to print it at all online.
It is clear to me as a physician-lawyer that the disinformation about both Covid-19 and the Constitution has caused us to turn a medical issue into a legal crisis.
The scientific usefulness of a mask has been so aggressively overstated, and the foundational importance of the Constitution has been so aggressively understated, that we have normalized people screaming obscenities at each other while hiking.
People who are apathetic toward their own liberty cannot eliminate Constitutional rights for those who are not. This is not the first (or last) time that people who believe in superstition are screaming the loudest. The Constitution exists precisely to protect all people during times of mass hysteria.
After all, size matters.
The pore size of cloth face coverings range from ~ 20-100 microns. The Covid virus is 200-1000x smaller than that, at 0.1 microns. Putting up a chain link fence will not keep out a mosquito. Even the most esteemed medical journals admit their purpose is to calm anxiety. “Expanded masking protocols’ greatest contribution may be to reduce the transmission of anxiety …”
Of course, by knowledge or common sense observation, most Americans already know that masking everyone is superstition. But unlike privately carrying a lucky charm, mandating facial coverings requires the consent of the governed.
Many cultures mandate clothing that appears totally irrational to outsiders. Never have those cultures pretended that there is a scientific basis for their clothing requirement. Their leaders rule, and their citizens accept, that their choice of clothing is due to religious or cultural preference.
Not wearing a mask is not mere “personal choice” like deciding between a head covering or a t-shirt. It is a flashpoint for being a free human being who has consented to be governed but has not consented to be ruled. We do not consent to a masked America, because that is a fundamental change in American society, culture, norms, and rights.
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Simone Gold, MD, JD, FABEM, is a board certified emergency physician. She graduated from Chicago Medical School before attending Stanford University Law School to earn her Juris Doctorate degree. She completed her residency in Emergency Medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. Dr. Gold worked in Washington D.C. for the Surgeon General, as well as for the Chairman of the Labor & Human Resources Committee. She works as an emergency physician on the frontlines whether or not there is a pandemic. Her clinical work serves all Americans: from urban-inner city, to suburban, to the IHS. Her legal work has focused on conflicts between hospitals and insurers. She writes on a number of policy issues relating to law and medicine. She always leads with the facts. Read more at The Gold Opinion.