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What you wrote in your health policy: “masks are encouraged but not required”
What I read: “Anti-maskers are welcome here. We wish the more vulnerable members of our community would just die and stop inconveniencing us.”
@mossmann "Masks are encouraged but not required"
No, they are not encouraged or you wouldn't phrase it that way.
"Please wear a mask" is how you express encouragement. You don't have to say "not required". Saying "not required" except when explicitly asked is saying "masks are DISCOURAGED".
@dalias @mossmann I was just in a doctor’s office three days ago with at least 5 signs all saying “Please wear a mask. Masks are encouraged when receiving treatment in this office” complete with wall-mounted mask dispensers… and yet I still overheard someone asking “Am I supposed to wear a mask?” to the nurse.
@lispi314 @mossmann @berdandy "Allowed" is intentionally left ambiguous whether it's their boss or the state or some other authority.
And no, at least in the US, not all medical facilities are allowed to deny service arbitrarily. Hospitals are required to have an ER that provides stabilizing service to anyone who shows up needing it, regardless of ability to pay.
Could they not however mandate them (or some other equivalent measures, for those with actual lung function issues) as part of "endangering others"? It is "proving a negative" difficult to prove that one isn't carrying some form of harmful unidentified biological agent, which in a place with vulnerable people means any potential carrier is a risk by default.
@lispi314 @mossmann @berdandy Between government malice (it's actually illegal in my state for schools not just to require masking, but to even ask kids to mask, even if their parents asked the teacher to make them mask; I suspect there's similar bs regulation against medical providers in some places) and our hospitals and many other medical medical facilities being owned by private equity rightwing nutjobs, there are probably both private and public obstacles to requiring masking like we should. But that doesn't mean we should issue poorly worded "encouragement" messages that actually discourage masking.
@lispi314 @mossmann @berdandy Like, cigarette vendors have the guts, when ordered by courts to say their products are harmful, to instead say "we've been ordered to tell you this is harmful despite disagreeing with that".
Medical providers should have the guts to do the same. Instead of saying "masking is encouraged but not required", say "please mask! we want to require you to mask, because it's necessary for the protection of our patients and staff, but [whoever] explicitly forbids us from doing that".