You have to give “credit” where credit is due: some people won’t wear face masks or get vaccinated because they just don’t care about other people; they just do what feels “comfortable” for themselves. No one tells them what to do or think. How much more honest can you get for being foolish, dumb and a danger to others? But there are others who believe that they can avoid scrutiny about their choices by claiming certain “exemptions”: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and religious exemptions as “protected” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and various state laws. Some states even permit “personal reasons” as the sole criteria for an “opt-out.”
These reasons to avoid vaccinations—especially for children—have been going on for years, well before the current COVID-19 pandemic, but as the Associated Press recently reported, 2,600 LAPD officers and personnel are “citing religious objections” to avoid vaccinations, while in the state of Washington, “thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions.” In Arkansas, so many health care workers are applying for religious exemptions that hospital administrators have decided to “call their bluff” by demanding that they sign a form that attests that they have never used any of the host of common brand name over-the-counter medications listed, which were developed under similar “objectionable” processes as the COVID vaccines. And many simply see allowing “religious exemptions” as nothing less than a form of medical malpractice, especially when it is applied to children.
But first things first. When the pandemic protocols were first established locally, it was on the Metro buses when I first heard of the HIPAA law. I heard a white female bus driver boast that she wasn’t wearing a mask, citing HIPAA. “If anyone asks me why I’m not wearing a mask, I just say ‘HIPAA, HIPAA, HIPAA!’” I thought there was something a little off with her, but that was the last time I saw a driver not wearing a mask during the pandemic. I also encountered a perfectly healthy-looking young black female on the bus telling people to be quiet about her not wearing a mask. “HIPAA” was her reason, and she acted as if she didn’t have to explain if she even knew what HIPAA was.
There are misconceptions about what HIPAA is by those who cite it as a reason not to mask or be vaccinated. To most anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, it just means that they don’t have to give you a reason, because it is “privileged” information. Of course it is easy for someone to lie about something if they don’t have to tell you anything, but HIPAA only puts a gag order on health care providers and businesses that are contracted by them. All other private businesses have a right to inquire why a customer or employee is not wearing a mask, even if they technically don’t have to provide the specific medical reason. Not only that, but businesses have the right to deny service or employment even if someone says “HIPAA” during a health crisis. Businesses have a legal right to “discriminate” based on legitimate health concerns, as the Civil Rights Act covers only race, religion, sex and national origin. Nor is there a “civil right” to do whatever you want to if it endangers others.
What about the ADA? Again this is “tricky” because people can lie about having a disability, and most disabilities do not prevent one from masking or being vaccinated. It is the ones that are not “obvious” that are most susceptible to falsifying. While there is the rare case of a companion to a deaf person who claims they can’t wear a mask because the deaf person communicates by reading his or her lips, most often the reason claimed is because the person has respiratory problems and has difficulty breathing through a mask, even if the people who make this claim without providing proof seem to be breathing perfectly well. Businesses can still deny entry on the premises but must provide alternative services, such as walk-ups and sidewalk service for people who claim a breathing disability, since the ADA bans outright discrimination against disabled people. But again, very few people who legitimately qualify under the ADA cannot wear masks or be vaccinated, and its use to avoid mask wearing and vaccinations has become increasingly misused by anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers as a “legitimate” excuse of they think they can get away with it.
Religious exemptions are probably the most frustrating and most abused rationalization by anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, because it requires no legitimate health reason to be used. According to a story in Slate, the pastor of a Baptist evangelical church in Tennessee named Greg Locke passed on the conspiracy theory “that ‘elites’ were trying to push an unsafe vaccine on the public while injecting themselves with sugar water.” Locke told his congregation that if they needed a religious exemption from mask or vaccination mandates to present to their employers to keep their jobs, he would be glad to write one up, and then they could “sue their stinkin’ pants off!”
While all major denominations have recommended their flock to get vaccinated, not all the “faithful” have complied. Even though Pope Francis has suggested that it was “suicide” not be vaccinated, and has even gone so far to say that it is “morally acceptable” to receive the shots even if development of the vaccinations involved cells from aborted fetuses, some Catholic dioceses have posted forms to apply for religious exemptions on their websites. Still, the Associated Press reported that 80 percent of Catholics claim that they have been vaccinated, and in general a higher percentage of those who claim to be “religious” reported in a survey that they are vaccinated than the public in general. Even Christian Scientists do not oppose mask wearing and vaccinations on “religious” grounds; proof of that was Tom Cruise’s rant about crew not following COVID protocols on the set of his latest Mission Impossible film.
Nevertheless, there are those fanatics who are using religion and its protection under the Civil Rights Act as a reason to claim exemption from mask and vaccination mandates, and these are a different “breed” from your run-of-the-mill virus denier. They think—or claim to think—that “God” will protect them from the virus, and if not, it is God’s “will.” But as observed previously, some pastors have taken it upon themselves to play “God” and spread conspiracy theories to frighten the “faithful” to inflate their own megalomania. Then there is Kenneth Copeland, looking like an idiot employing the “wind of God” to destroy the pandemic; some of his congregation seemed to think he was just being “funny,” because there is nothing “funny” about over 600,000 dead from the virus since he “blew it away.”
There are limits to how religious exemptions can be successfully used to avoid protocols. Most legal experts say that such exemptions only have to be honored if an employer can accommodate the person without causing “undue hardship” in the workplace, such as isolating him or her from other employees. Of course if you have many workers demanding a religious exemption in one space, employers have the right—as long the policy is “neutral” and there is no obvious intent to discriminate against any particular group—to refuse to grant the exemptions, giving those workers the “option” of not working at all.
During this pandemic we needed to put our foot down and say enough is enough to dangerous and foolish behavior. It is probably already too late in many states with governors who think “everyone” should be “exempted” from doing what needs to be done simply on the grounds of “personal choice, without even the fig leaf of false claims about HIPAA, the ADA and religious exemptions. At least “personal choice”—or stupidity—makes more “sense.”
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