Is Raising a Medical Exemption a Proper Way to Deal With Those Who Want Us to Wear a Mask?

James N. Scott emails:

 Greetings,

I write today to comment on your professed endorsement of a declaration of health-related exemptions to Covid-19 rules. 

First, let me claim that I am a staunch property rights advocate. I would never insist on being allowed entry to or service from a privately held busines that objected to my refusal to mask myself and would discourage others similarly. However, I also have little patience for foolishness and believe it should be challenged from time to time. This is the challenge to the mask foolishness I advocate:

 I have some concern with the blanket statement "I have a health exemption". If that's the defense to which everyone goes, I fear it will eventually be challenged and even disallowed. Witness conscientious objection to vaccination and its demise in most States. Even the religious exemption has been disallowed by several legislatures. When my patients ask me how to respond to confrontations about their respective refusal to mask themselves, I instruct them to authoritatively and dismissively declare "I'm exempt".  If the interlocutor persists by asking about the exemption the instructed response is along the lines of "You're not supposed to ask me that. It can very expensive for your company."  If further pressed, respond "I'm feeling generous today so I will volunteer that I have CTS, both the chronic and acute forms."  If that fails to dissuade the mini-Marxist and "CTS" is challenged the escalated response is along the lines of "If you really want me to answer that, you should probably get someone from management here. The fines for those violations are pretty steep."  I've never seen or heard of the confrontation over masks escalating to a discussion with management. If it should, rinse and repeat.
I'm sure that living in the relatively free State of Florida has a lot to do with the low confrontation rates I've experienced, zero to date with absolute non-compliance.

CTS is Critical Thinking Skills.

On a lighter note, one could always feign memory failure due to one's recent fever for failure to mask-up. "I can't remember anything since I started running this fever" while leaning in toward your antagonist.

Thanks for the insights. I keep reading.

Best personal regards,
James N. Scott, D.C.

RW response:

Well. first of all, it is not clear that it is store policy at many stores to harass customers. In many cases, it is midget-Mao employees who take on enforcement actions all on their own.

I don't often take it to the next level of management but when I have, and I have done so with Half Price Books in Berkeley and Macy's in San Francisco, management sides with me.

Allan Stevo takes it to management level a lot more often than I do and upper management almost always seems to give him a pass. I have seen him in action. In fact, there is one chain (I will keep its name private) that allows him when he shops to skip the line that is sometimes formed because of limited capacity regulations. They allow him to go in and an employee will announce on the speaker system to other store employees, "There is a man who is entering the store to shop without a mask, please do not challenge him"

I generally take the default view that it is a rogue employee rather than store policy, and so I happily challenge.

The junior Mao stores that obviously have company leadership backing customer oppression are easy to spot. In San Francisco, the worst are Cole Hardware and the Irish Bank Pub. I just stay away from them. 

Secondly, as I have stated before, it is important to challenge midget-Mao's to understand how to deal with their confrontations, not specifically because of wearing masks oppression, but what it might teach us about how to deal with them in the future when even more oppressive demands may be made of us.

Interestingly, as I have noted, there even seems to be an ethnic difference between midget-Maos. With Asians and Latinos, I can brush them off with just a little more than a curt response a dismissive wave of my hand and they don't challenge me any further. I have the most difficulty with white male midget Maos between the ages of 20 to 35. These guys really think they are officially-sanctioned Anthony Fauci enforcers and it takes advanced skills to dismiss them.

As for the statement "I have a health exemption," it might become ineffective in the future but you always use the tactics that work at a given time and then adjust. In his unpublished paper on strategy, Murray Rothbard clearly acknowledged that tactics need to be changed and adjusted over time as the situation changes. Use what works and then adjust.

And as for the idea that "I have a health exemption" may not be an exact representation of the all facts, I have no problem saying what needs to be said to get from under the thumb of state-inspired oppressors, who seem to want to make the world over in their ugly distorted image, when I just want to be left the alone, the way it was the case in the Old America.

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