A policeman wearing a flu mask leads two men away from the Ferry Building in 1918.California State Library
- San Francisco has been praised for adhering to the advice of public health officials and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic quickly.
- But a century earlier during the Spanish flu pandemic, the city was met with anti-mask advocacy, a movement that also exists during the present-day health crisis.
- The "Anti-Mask League of 1919" formed to overthrow a law ordering residents to wear masks, which they argued was a violation of their civil liberties. Hundreds of "mask slackers" failed to comply with the law during the pandemic, leading to their arrests.
- There were 1,000 reported deaths in the city in mid-October 1918. By February 1919, after the city emerged from lockdown too soon and some protested the mask law, 3,000 had been killed.
- Then and now, masks aren't a silver bullet in containing respiratory diseases, but they can help.
San Francisco and the surrounding region has been lauded across the US for its stringent compliance with public health orders during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
It was one of the first to enter a shelter-in-place order on March 17. But it also happens to be the birthplace of the poster child of anti-mask sentiment during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
The city enforced the wearing of masks during the 1918 pandemic. But some residents were dismissive, wearing them improperly out of apathy or to smoke, leading to hundreds of arrests. And some heartily fought back against the enforcement, believing that the masks were unsanitary, useless, and a threat to their constitutional rights.
An "Anti-Mask League" was formed in January 1919 in San Francisco, with its members — dubbed "Sanitary Spartacans" — fighting for the mask-wearing mandate to be repealed.
They eventually got their way, but only after San Francisco became one of the worst-hit cities in the US. Eventually, 45,000 residents were infected.
Anti-mask rhetoric is again present in the modern-day COVID-19 health crisis, as some protest mask-wearing and government shutdowns designed to stunt the spread of the disease.
Here's how San Francisco's so-called "mask slackers" and the Anti-Mask League clashed with city officials over laws mandating that residents cover their faces to help in the fight against the flu in 1918 and 1919.
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