On August 30, the Sarasota County, Florida, school district instituted a face mask requirement for all students. The only exceptions would be those who could provide a form signed by a health care professional confirming that they have a medical reason for not being able to wear a face mask. And voilà, just like that, over a thousand students in Sarasota County presented their schools with such signed medical exception forms. Who would have thought that so many students would have real medical reasons for not wearing face masks?
Guess who signed about a third of these forms. If you answered a pediatrician, a head and neck doctor, or a pulmonologist, you’d have to stand corrected. The answer rhymes with velociraptor or a man in a tractor. Apparently a chiropractor named Dan Busch, DC, CCEP, signed over 500 medical exemption forms for students in the school district, according to Ryan McKinnon reporting for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Yes, a chiropractor.
This ABC7 SWFL news segment covered the “backstory”:
As you can see in the news segment, people seemed to be lining up to see the chiropractor as if they were waiting for an autograph session with Justin Bieber.
A chiropractor may not be the first person you think of when you have severe breathing problems. Or the second. Or the third. Or even the twentieth. If you had a nickel for the number of times you heard, “I can’t breathe, I really need a chiropractor,” how many nickels would you end up having? The Merriam Webster dictionary defines chiropractor as “a licensed health-care professional who treats disorders (such as back and neck pain) chiefly of the musculoskeletal system especially through the manual adjustment or manipulation of the spinal vertebrae to correct nervous system dysfunction.” How much of this screams, “able to determine whether someone can wear a face mask?”
The website at Twin Palms Chiropractic mentions that Busch’s practice “includes nutritional counseling and massage therapy” and “treatment of injuries, rehabilitation of extremities, disc conditions,” but makes no mention of respiratory conditions or the nose or mouth for that matter.
McKinnon’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune article also reported that there were rumors that Busch’s office was distributing “pre-signed forms.” This reportedly prompted Sarasota school district Superintendent Brennan Asplen to institute a new version of the face mask exemption form. This updated version limits who can sign the form to medical doctors, osteopathic physicians, or nurse practitioners.
As you can imagine, the school district is not enforcing face mask wearing just for the fun of it or to restrict people’s freedoms. They’re doing it because the Covid-19 coronavirus continues to surge in Florida. And kids tend to have noses and mouths. Plus, most kids can’t get vaccinated yet. Without wearing a face mask, an infected student could spew viruses into the air like someone doing the Savage TikTok dance while holding a water sprinkler. Although a face mask may not be able to block all such viruses from making it into the air, masking can at least reduce the amount of virus.
A masked school mascot in a bobcat costume greets students as they arrive on the first day of ... [+]
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Therefore, the school district is requiring face mask wearing for everyone except for those who can provide a form signed by a licensed medical professional, stating that they “cannot wear a mask or a face shield (or both) due to a medical, physical or psychological contraindication.” This exemption is meant for people who truly have a legit reason why they can’t wear face masks such as breathing difficulties rather than “just don’t feel like doing so.”
For a health care professional to sign a medical exemption to a face mask requirement, that health professional needs to actually verify whether there is indeed a real medical reason why the person can’t wear a face mask. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists three categories of people who be exempt from a face mask requirement. The first would be a child under the age of two years. Now presumably you don’t need a health care professional to verify that your kid is under two years of age. There should be clues such as your kid was just born last year or doesn’t have a moustache yet. Plus, what the bleep would you be doing sending someone two years or younger to kindergarten or an elementary school.
The second category are persons “with a disability who cannot wear a mask, or cannot safely wear a mask, for reasons related to the disability.” There aren’t too many disabilities or conditions that would truly prevent face mask use. Being unconscious is certainly one. However, typically, sending an unconscious kid to school is a bad idea. Instead, you may want to have such a kid be seen by a physician. You don’t want to say, “oh, little Emma”, “oh, little Axl” or “oh, little Tablecloth” or whatever you’ve named your child, “are unconscious again? How many times have I told you not to be unconscious?”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been pushing against local face mask requirements even though the ... [+]
Getty Images
In fact, practically every medical reason for not wearing a face mask is a reason that should merit being seen by a physician already, well in advance of a face mask requirement. For example, don’t wait until your child is asked to wear a face mask to have a physician address your child’s significant breathing problems such as having severe asthma.
That’s why a face mask exemption form really should be signed by a physician or nurse practitioner who has already been seeing your child for a while. If you are visiting a health care professional just for the sole purpose of getting a face mask exemption, that’s not cool. You are basically trying to get around a rule designed to protect everyone. This can be analogous to trying to hide your peeing or pooping in a swimming pool.
By the way, the third reason offered by the CDC for potentially not wearing face masks is “a person for whom wearing a mask would create a risk to workplace health, safety, or job duty as determined by the workplace risk assessment.” Now it’s hard to imagine your kid have such a crucial job at school where people would have to see his or her mouth at all times. Even in such a case, there are face masks with transparent windows.
Remember not all health care professionals are the same. You probably wouldn’t go to a rectal surgeon to take care of an ear problem even if the rectal surgeon were to say, “a hole is a hole.” Similarly, it should be clear what chiropractors are specifically trained and licensed to do. And what they are not.
When it comes to face mask exemptions forms, the concern is that some people may see signing such forms as a way to make a quick buck. That’s because surprise, surprise there are people willing to, surprise, surprise, profit off of any situation even it means putting others at risk. Even if they are not necessarily looking to make a profit, they could be trying to make a political statement, which isn’t something that should be conflated with public safety.
Therefore, school districts may want to make anyone signing a face mask exemption fully document how long he or she has been seeing the child, what expertise he or she has in making such a determination, and what are the specific findings and reasons for the face mask exemption. Making the form more complex to complete can help prevent games such as providing pre-signed forms. It could help correct matters and prevent anyone from manipulating the situation, so to speak.
#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/florida-chiropractor-signs-over-500-face-mask-exemptions-for-students-despite-covid-19-surge/
No comments:
Post a Comment