Musings: If I wear a mask, don't treat me like a criminal

I was born, raised and educated through college while living in Nassau County. It was a great place to grow up, a place where neighbors cared about one another and respected the rights of each other. It was a place where a youngster could perceive that the masses were not indiscriminately punished for the bad acts of a few; those who played no role in those acts did not suffer at the hands of the government. But things have changed — and not in a good way.

Now a retired health care practitioner, I am distraught to be forced to accept that my childhood “playground” would no longer respect my personal rights to wear a protective mask in public, dangling the prospect of prosecution should I determine for myself or family members that the then-present environment warrants the donning of face masks.

Since when does the government get to decide how I choose to protect against personal consequences that few are aware of?

I cannot count the number of multi-hour surgical procedures I performed, every one while wearing a mask. And I cannot recall one patient suggesting that I remove my mask while operating because I would likely feel more comfortable and less physically constrained. The mask was medically necessary, and that was that.

More recently, the criticism has been that people use masks to hide their identities while committing crimes or potentially doing so. Perhaps they do. But people also use cars to commit crimes, yet driving is still permissible, and rightly so, because the masses should not be punished for the bad acts of a few.

Should I decide to come to Nassau County to visit family or walk along its beaches or eat in its restaurants, I would literally be forced to make a critical life decision: wear a mask to protect my wife, who is suffering from blood cancer and who, consequently, has a reasonably foreseeable decreased ability to fight off infection, or go mask-free so as to comport with the county’s edict.

If I choose the first, it would be left to the discretion of a law enforcement officer as to whether my explanation that my wife’s monocyte count was low this week (an explanation that speaks to increased infection risk and which is most likely beyond the level of understanding of most non-medical members of society) was good enough to avoid being arrested and charged. So, the “medical exception” aspect of the law is nothing more than a paper tiger, a discretionary edict. If the exception requires having a physician’s note in hand, it is no different than a child’s having to present a doctor’s note after a school absence.

Yes, I would probably be exonerated, but not before the embarrassment of arrest, the costs of legal representation, the physical disruption to my life and my wife’s, and the stresses of potential conviction.

— Dr. Marc Leffler, Pomona, N.Y.