We have never been so aware of masks. They were in short supply in the early days of COVID-19, resulting in significant risk to health care workers. Now they are highly politicized with battles about mask-wearing protocols breaking out in public. Although masks have obtained a new urgency and ubiquity in the context of COVID-19, people have thought about both the literal and metaphorical role of masks in medicine for generations. In this paper, we discuss three such metaphors—the masks of objectivity, of infallibility, and of benevolence—and their powerful role in medicine. These masks can be viewed as inflexible barriers to communication, contributing to the traditional authoritarian relationship between doctor and patient and concealing the authenticity and vulnerability of physicians. COVID masks, by contrast, offer a more nuanced and morally complex metaphor for thinking about protecting people from harm, authentic and trustworthy communication, and attention to potential inequities both in and beyond medical settings. We highlight the morally relevant challenges and opportunities that masks evoke and suggest that there is much to be gained from rethinking the mask metaphor in medicine.

我们从来没有如此意识到口罩。他们在COVID-19成立之初就供不应求，给医护人员带来了巨大的风险。现在，他们在公开场合爆发了有关戴口罩的协议之战，从而高度政治化。尽管在COVID-19的背景下，口罩已具有新的紧迫性和普遍性，但人们却一直在思考口罩在世代医学中的字面意义和隐喻作用。在本文中，我们讨论了三个这样的隐喻-客观性，无误性和仁慈的面具-以及它们在医学中的强大作用。这些口罩可被视为沟通的僵化障碍，助长了医生与患者之间的传统威权关系，并掩盖了医生的真实性和脆弱性。相比之下，COVID面罩 提供了一个更细微和道德上复杂的隐喻，用于考虑保护人们免受伤害，进行真实可信的交流，并注意医疗环境内外的潜在不平等现象。我们强调了面具引发的与道德相关的挑战和机遇，并建议重新思考医学中的面具隐喻可以从中获得很多益处。