Posted on 08/05/2020 7:31:58 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
As the influenza pandemic swept across the United States in 1918 and 1919, masks took a role in political and cultural wars.
The masks were called muzzles, germ shields and dirt traps. They gave people a “pig-like snout.” Some people snipped holes in their masks to smoke cigars. Others fastened them to dogs in mockery. Bandits used them to rob banks.
More than a century ago, as the 1918 influenza pandemic raged in the United States, masks of gauze and cheesecloth became the facial front lines in the battle against the virus. ...the masks stoked political division...medical authorities urged the wearing of masks to help slow the spread of disease...some people resisted.
In 1918 and 1919, as bars, saloons, restaurants, theaters and schools were closed, masks became a scapegoat, a symbol of government overreach, inspiring protests, petitions and defiant bare-face gatherings. All the while, thousands of Americans were dying in a deadly pandemic.
The first infections were identified in March, at an Army base in Kansas, where 100 soldiers were infected. Within a week, the number of flu cases grew fivefold, and soon the disease was taking hold across the country, prompting some cities to impose quarantines and mask orders to contain it.
By the fall of 1918, seven cities San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, Denver, Indianapolis and Pasadena, Calif. had mandatory face mask laws...
Organized resistance to mask wearing was not common. “There were flare-ups, there were scuffles and there were occasional groups, like the Anti-Mask League, but that is the exception rather than the rule.”
At the forefront of the safety measures was San Francisco...By the end of October, there were more than 60,000 cases statewide, with 7,000 of them in San Francisco. It soon became known as the “masked city.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
STAY HOME, YOU COWARD!
You believe EVERYTHING you read, don’t you?
Will you force us? We are armed, you tinpot tyrant.
It is easy to see that COVID-19 related subjects are your thing. You must be living in terror to post as you do.
So you have a problem with someone turning your own” clever phrase” around, the one where you hope people die from the disease , so they can have themselves removed from the gene pool to to make a more superior human such as yourself more dominant in the gene pool? I see you are a big fan of Darwin. Not a surprise there, but...hoping people die to make your political point? Shame on you.
Given who is all aboard for keeping everything closed until things are 100% safe (which means forever, or least after the 2020 election is over) that does put you right on the line that Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the the Left in the media want us to toe.
I can almost hear you saying “But...but President Trump says we should wear masks” and yeah he has, but it is pretty clear it is a political box he is talking from.
You are in agreement with the lady in the image above bearing the sign “Wear a mask or go to jail”, you are also on board with the Wilson Administration, the same conservative values one that gave us the income tax. You want to keep that ideological company, that’s your business
You don’t have a business that is dependent on customer traffic, so as long as it doesn’t affect you, you are fine with everyone going under who it does affect? You accept they are collateral damage to save your own skin?
You say people have zero right to infect other people, but that the government has all the right and power to shut down a normal business someone has spent a life building?
I am sympathetic that you are scared to death because you have risk factors or are spending too much time watching the alphabet news to get your mind free of it. But guess what, a lot of us have risk factors, but we aren’t willing to sacrifice the future of our children and their children to keep things shut down indefinitely like you are in order to save our own skins.
I am in two more conservative leaning states this past week, and masks are worn or not. It is up to the user. If someone runs a business and wants people to wear a mask in their establishment, they can mandate it. As a consumer, you can choose to put on a mask to go elsewhere. And they don’t have jerks glaring at them or cops arresting them. People who are at risk wear masks or quarantine themselves. They protect themselves.
You are afraid? Here’s some advice: be a conservative and take control of your own actions to protect yourself.
i’m not afraid of the covid and do not understand why you would address me as though i am.
I think folks who are frightened should stay home and let those of us who are not, go about our business.
I saw one of the uncivil replies to you, that was why. I get where you are coming from.
oh ok! thanks :)
What morel wrote was elegant and fantastic and really summed things up.
I appreciate him writing it.
I have no tongue for that kind of eloquent writing.
David chase you are a bitch. You’re a disgrace to this board and a disgrace to conservatives and a disgrace to America.
The examples you use for your argument are so weak I won’t waste time addressing them.
you’re a fake tough-guy that probably has a bunch of guns but who would urinate in his pants if some of the guys I know put a gun up to you
Because unlike you, they would use it.
Buona sera
“SARS and MERS were also coronaviruses”
So is one form of the common cold and no immunization has ever been found for that one.
“Sorry, the numbers I have are 3.35% fatality rate for Covid-19.”
Then you have bogus numbers created out of political propaganda.
The death rate depends on the state but the fact it is it is dropping. North Carolina is around 1.5%. It’s falling because they are testing asymptomatic people now. It could drop below 1% after schools start back up and all the college students get tested.
Since we do not test everyone, and I am not advocating that we do, there is only a statistical guess as to how many have been infected, but even the CDC numbers have previously stated that the death rate is no higher than the flu and probably about the flu rate.
My understanding is that the mortality rate for COVID-19 overall is under 0.5%, and may even be as low as 0.1%.
Granted, there are higher mortality rates in higher age brackets (65 and up but even that can be broken down to those with and without specific co-morbidities) but adopting a one-size-fits-all approach is not only counterproductive but destructive.
Yes. In higher age brackets, it can be deadly. So those people need to protect themselves and take appropriate action.
It irritates me that we are unable to have a rational discussion about this.
If you are a proponent of anything that involves less than total masking all the time everywhere, then you want people dead.
I happen to think that people who are for total masking all the time everywhere simply have no grasp on the mechanics of the pathogen and as a result, are advocates of statist approaches, but I am willing to discuss it rationally.
That isn’t how things go around here, though.
Previously, we only tested symptomatic people so the death rate stayed pretty high. When we started testing everyone, the numbers plummeted and I mean dramatically. I also started to see strange data anomalies like negative active cases.
I was one who was willing early on to go along with whatever draconian measures were applied, but I worked in a hospital, and it became apparent early on that it wasn’t a terrible thing like Bubonic Plague. It was bad if you were elderly, but so was pneumonia and flu.
We should have been adjusting as we went, but the media and left, using this piece of crap models, were allowed to set the stage for what we see now.
It’s amazingly contagious. We have 60 cases in a nearby nursing home because 3 staff members went to Myrtle Beach. They were obviously masked up and it still rolled through there like wildfire.
I don’t doubt it is highly contagious...and dangerous to a population of people.
THOSE people have to be protected and must protect themselves when they can.
Pretty much sums it up. Playing devils advocate what does the left blame him for? To be fair there are some so called conservatives who also blame him.
If they find a vaccine for the common cold, what excuse will kids have in the future for skipping school on test days?
Sheesh, I post a nice historical article about the influenza pandemic a hundred years ago and you take me to task for a completely different thing? Thanks a lot.
I didn’t send this discussion off into the weeds of mask vs no mask. I just thought it would be nice to see what great-great grandpa and grandma did back then.
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