Despite the cries that anti-maskers are ableist, mask zealots have completely ignored the impact that mask mandates have had on those with hearing loss.
Jennifer thank you so much, and I agree the most toxic & irresponsible thing has been the elite “expert” classmembers like sociologist Zeynep Tufecki callously dismissing masking harms.
I work with disabled, very frail older adults who are at the ends of their lives & where hearing loss, dementia, & sensory impairment are rampant. Ongoing masking policies with them are pointlessly cruel, which I’ve written about extensively at my own Substack:
Thank you Jennifer for writing Sheryl’s story, God bless her & Pringles too .
I have been following your own story as well , your own courage & your protection of human values is beyond outstanding . You & Naomi Wolf would be a great team & an incredible force in this movement for the salvation of humanity .
Hi Jen, thank you for bringing this to light. I have 2 daughters now ages 4 and 6 who have a moderate hearing loss and wear hearing aids and the first 2 years of Covid were a complete nightmare for them and our whole family. Muffled sound, the inability to read lips and facial expressions in such a pivotal time of development was so challenging! We are still recovering from the set backs we experienced from that time. Like the woman you talk about, I have been diligently working with my kids and finding specialists to help them catch up. No one would help us get mask exemptions, no doctor would go to bat for us! Masking hearing impaired toddlers- I still can’t believe it, and it still makes me so mad.
Thank you for this piece! More attention on mask harms is probably the best way to keep mandates from coming back.
I can't imagine being a child in school or daycare forced to wear one - and trying to understand a teacher wearing a mask - for 6, 8, or 10 hours per day.
Per usual, this is a fantastic post that brings great light to important angles that I’m sure most people have never even considered. Here is another one. I have two careers. Career one is brand strategy (I’ve discussed things from this perspective with you before). Career two is professional dog training. To put it bluntly, the pandemic was great for dog training. For starters, everyone got a dog with some shelters actually running out of them at various points. This was great. The second reason (not something to celebrate) is that dogs born during the pandemic are often way behind in socialization and training, even to this day, and will be for several years. People stopped exercising and exploring (something dogs need for several reasons) and even if you did get out, others stayed in or would walk clearly around you to avoid all contact. Add to that the fact that people stopped having guests and everyone started shopping online (chasing UPS and Amazon drivers away is a self-reinforcing behavior) and many dogs have never learned or have actually un-learned how to confidently live amongst new humans and other situations in public or at home. Imprinting occurs in dogs between 8 and 16 weeks old. Old dogs can certainly learn new tricks, but once key learning windows close due to the nature of brain development, much of it becomes far more difficult. There is no doubt in my mind that the negative effects of lockdown will persist for many dogs and the people who love them for years.
Thank you! Yes, they do cause harm and I am sure the harm far out weighs the good. As a school based speech language pathologist, I have been contacting ASHA, our governing board, about this but sadly they refuse to change the messaging. I feel it is my duty to advocate for children and those with disabilities to be able to communicate freely without barriers. I have found only a few studies that show the negative impact. As the Cochrane review stated, there needs to be more studies to show the harms. I think we just need a little common sense...
As a person with a hearing disability, acoustic shock syndrome, caused at my workplace, I was very touched by this article. In spite of hearing aids, since the past three years of masking my understanding of language has diminished. I now wonder if the inability to read lips and facial expressions has caused a deterioration in my ability to understand when people are speaking. I can hear the words, but I often cannot grasp their full meaning. It is as if my brain refuses to comprehend what the ears are hearing. I could not abide wearing a mask, due to asthma which made me feel my breathing had been shut off. So I avoided even grocery shopping, further isolating me. I also suffer from face blindness, a neurological condition I have worked on to improve my comprehension of facial features. Now it does no good, when all I can see are the eyes and foreheads of people around me. Still, the majority of the people in the San Francisco Bay Area are continuing to wear masks and insist the people they might encounter at social and public events be vaccinated. I cannot comply with either fantasy and therefore continue to remain isolated from almost everything I used to do.
Thank you for writing about this. Although my hearing loss is moderate, I didn’t realize how much I depend on lip reading, facial expression, and other body language cues to understand people. Where I work we had mandatory masking plus stupid plexiglass and people don’t understand that every layer you put between your mouth and my ears makes understanding more difficult. This is the real ableism.
I have a coworker with permanent, moderate to severe lung damage that was confirmed and documented by her doctor as being caused by mask wearing.
I have no hearing issues, but still struggled quite often to understand and interact with people through the masks. I also experienced lightheadedness, felt ill, and was claustrophobic to the point of having a panic attack within a few days of starting to wear one. My employer was accommodating and let anyone who pressed the issue wear a face shield instead, but this was a passive policy: if you were struggling to breathe, visibly near the point of passing out (I saw this on more than one occasion), management would look the other way, you had to advocate for yourself, they would not look out for you.
My point: I am a healthy male in my mid thirties who had no existing physical, psychological, developmental issues, and masks were extremely detrimental to me. I have no doubt that it was worse, much worse even, for people who had pre-existing issues — but I am convinced, based on personal experience and observation, that EVERYONE was being harmed, one way or another, by masking.
Jennifer again I thank you for your courage and leadership. My son with cerebral palsy suffered tremendously with the extended lockdowns in CA, finally back in some kind of program for young adults with disabilities…still have yo mask even outdoors and no one can understand him with mask + speech impediment. I was attacked on Twitter and elsewhere as ableist for wanting his special ed school to reopen during its 2 year closure. Who elected these hysterics to represent “ the disabled community?”
Ironically, the most selfish people of all were the ones who claimed to have been 'saving granny'.
I'm actually hard of hearing in one ear. I don't know how many times I had to tell people in a store I couldn't hear them through the masks and plexiglass. They always lowered their mask to speak to me. In the process, they defeated the entire (alleged) purpose of the mask and its (alleged) effectiveness.
I work with the hearing impaired and the elderly. This has been really rough on them, many admit that the only time they leave the house is to go to doctor visits. They struggle not only to communicate (with masks) but also with the fear that they will contact this “horrible disease” and surely will die because of it. Even with hearing aids, many hearing impaired people use visual cues to understand what is being said, there is so much information conveyed on the face. I’ve also seen countless kids in my office with speech and language delays. We need to see faces to communicate! I understood some of the masking in the beginning, but it’s gone on for far too long. Just today a gentleman was in my office, he told me he had Covid in January, yet he still double masked!!! I had a hard time hearing him though the masks! It’s a cult, I’m getting more convinced everyday.
Jennifer thank you so much, and I agree the most toxic & irresponsible thing has been the elite “expert” classmembers like sociologist Zeynep Tufecki callously dismissing masking harms.
I work with disabled, very frail older adults who are at the ends of their lives & where hearing loss, dementia, & sensory impairment are rampant. Ongoing masking policies with them are pointlessly cruel, which I’ve written about extensively at my own Substack:
https://open.substack.com/pub/gerodoc/p/masking-is-viciously-abelist-along?utm_source=direct&r=6fzx9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you Jennifer for writing Sheryl’s story, God bless her & Pringles too .
I have been following your own story as well , your own courage & your protection of human values is beyond outstanding . You & Naomi Wolf would be a great team & an incredible force in this movement for the salvation of humanity .
God bless you & your family .
Hi Jen, thank you for bringing this to light. I have 2 daughters now ages 4 and 6 who have a moderate hearing loss and wear hearing aids and the first 2 years of Covid were a complete nightmare for them and our whole family. Muffled sound, the inability to read lips and facial expressions in such a pivotal time of development was so challenging! We are still recovering from the set backs we experienced from that time. Like the woman you talk about, I have been diligently working with my kids and finding specialists to help them catch up. No one would help us get mask exemptions, no doctor would go to bat for us! Masking hearing impaired toddlers- I still can’t believe it, and it still makes me so mad.
Thank you for this piece! More attention on mask harms is probably the best way to keep mandates from coming back.
I can't imagine being a child in school or daycare forced to wear one - and trying to understand a teacher wearing a mask - for 6, 8, or 10 hours per day.
Per usual, this is a fantastic post that brings great light to important angles that I’m sure most people have never even considered. Here is another one. I have two careers. Career one is brand strategy (I’ve discussed things from this perspective with you before). Career two is professional dog training. To put it bluntly, the pandemic was great for dog training. For starters, everyone got a dog with some shelters actually running out of them at various points. This was great. The second reason (not something to celebrate) is that dogs born during the pandemic are often way behind in socialization and training, even to this day, and will be for several years. People stopped exercising and exploring (something dogs need for several reasons) and even if you did get out, others stayed in or would walk clearly around you to avoid all contact. Add to that the fact that people stopped having guests and everyone started shopping online (chasing UPS and Amazon drivers away is a self-reinforcing behavior) and many dogs have never learned or have actually un-learned how to confidently live amongst new humans and other situations in public or at home. Imprinting occurs in dogs between 8 and 16 weeks old. Old dogs can certainly learn new tricks, but once key learning windows close due to the nature of brain development, much of it becomes far more difficult. There is no doubt in my mind that the negative effects of lockdown will persist for many dogs and the people who love them for years.
Thank you! Yes, they do cause harm and I am sure the harm far out weighs the good. As a school based speech language pathologist, I have been contacting ASHA, our governing board, about this but sadly they refuse to change the messaging. I feel it is my duty to advocate for children and those with disabilities to be able to communicate freely without barriers. I have found only a few studies that show the negative impact. As the Cochrane review stated, there needs to be more studies to show the harms. I think we just need a little common sense...
Autistic kids who can't tolerate masks and who lived in heavily blue areas of the country essentially couldn't go indoors anywhere for 2+ years.
As a person with a hearing disability, acoustic shock syndrome, caused at my workplace, I was very touched by this article. In spite of hearing aids, since the past three years of masking my understanding of language has diminished. I now wonder if the inability to read lips and facial expressions has caused a deterioration in my ability to understand when people are speaking. I can hear the words, but I often cannot grasp their full meaning. It is as if my brain refuses to comprehend what the ears are hearing. I could not abide wearing a mask, due to asthma which made me feel my breathing had been shut off. So I avoided even grocery shopping, further isolating me. I also suffer from face blindness, a neurological condition I have worked on to improve my comprehension of facial features. Now it does no good, when all I can see are the eyes and foreheads of people around me. Still, the majority of the people in the San Francisco Bay Area are continuing to wear masks and insist the people they might encounter at social and public events be vaccinated. I cannot comply with either fantasy and therefore continue to remain isolated from almost everything I used to do.
another fact based great article by J-Sey
You inspire me. Thank you for bravely, calmly, clearly presenting your wisdom.
Thank you for writing about this. Although my hearing loss is moderate, I didn’t realize how much I depend on lip reading, facial expression, and other body language cues to understand people. Where I work we had mandatory masking plus stupid plexiglass and people don’t understand that every layer you put between your mouth and my ears makes understanding more difficult. This is the real ableism.
I am 87 years old and have some hearing loss. I cannot
understand people who speak while wearing masks. That includes
doctors who are trying to tell me things.
I have a coworker with permanent, moderate to severe lung damage that was confirmed and documented by her doctor as being caused by mask wearing.
I have no hearing issues, but still struggled quite often to understand and interact with people through the masks. I also experienced lightheadedness, felt ill, and was claustrophobic to the point of having a panic attack within a few days of starting to wear one. My employer was accommodating and let anyone who pressed the issue wear a face shield instead, but this was a passive policy: if you were struggling to breathe, visibly near the point of passing out (I saw this on more than one occasion), management would look the other way, you had to advocate for yourself, they would not look out for you.
My point: I am a healthy male in my mid thirties who had no existing physical, psychological, developmental issues, and masks were extremely detrimental to me. I have no doubt that it was worse, much worse even, for people who had pre-existing issues — but I am convinced, based on personal experience and observation, that EVERYONE was being harmed, one way or another, by masking.
Jennifer again I thank you for your courage and leadership. My son with cerebral palsy suffered tremendously with the extended lockdowns in CA, finally back in some kind of program for young adults with disabilities…still have yo mask even outdoors and no one can understand him with mask + speech impediment. I was attacked on Twitter and elsewhere as ableist for wanting his special ed school to reopen during its 2 year closure. Who elected these hysterics to represent “ the disabled community?”
Ironically, the most selfish people of all were the ones who claimed to have been 'saving granny'.
I'm actually hard of hearing in one ear. I don't know how many times I had to tell people in a store I couldn't hear them through the masks and plexiglass. They always lowered their mask to speak to me. In the process, they defeated the entire (alleged) purpose of the mask and its (alleged) effectiveness.
I like this collection of mask studies.
https://masklockdowndata.squarespace.com
I work with the hearing impaired and the elderly. This has been really rough on them, many admit that the only time they leave the house is to go to doctor visits. They struggle not only to communicate (with masks) but also with the fear that they will contact this “horrible disease” and surely will die because of it. Even with hearing aids, many hearing impaired people use visual cues to understand what is being said, there is so much information conveyed on the face. I’ve also seen countless kids in my office with speech and language delays. We need to see faces to communicate! I understood some of the masking in the beginning, but it’s gone on for far too long. Just today a gentleman was in my office, he told me he had Covid in January, yet he still double masked!!! I had a hard time hearing him though the masks! It’s a cult, I’m getting more convinced everyday.