NY Times: Mask Mandates DO NOT Work. (Duh)

Today. David Leonhardt of the New York Times admits to something we’ve known for a very long time: mask mandates don’t work! Of course, he goes on trying to split the different implying that masks work but mandates don’t - a common refrain.

The old adage - those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it seems appropriate here because we’ve known that masks don’t work for over 100 years.

You've no doubt seen Team Apocalypse use clippings from 1918 regarding mask mandates, enforcement, virtue signaling as popular precedent to today's situation. Little known are the words of those who opposed masks back then... and they were many:

That headline was in the Santa Barbara Daily News and the Independent, Nov 16, 1918. "The average person doesn't know how to take care of a mask... and it not cleansed the thing soon becomes a veritable bacteria incubator." - Looking around you... has anything changed? Here’s the full article:

One doctor interviewed then states: "As a matter of fact, the common use of the mask tends to propagate rather than check influenza."

Let's hop over to Iowa. Des Moines Tribune, Nov 30, 1918.

Even back then the mask jokes went far and wide: "One badgerded benedict wants to know why they don't extend the wearing of the flu masks to the home so he won't know whether his wife greets him with a smile or a frown when he arrives late for dinner"

Or... "It wouldn't be difficult now to organize a local branch of the Ku-Klux-Klan in Des Moines" Or "Those girls who lament constantly the absence of a "decisive" chin might try wearing flu masks with special chin pads. (Patent applied for.)

And "Maidens with masks keep a man wildly guessing, Wondering if facial beauty he's missing. With lips made alone for ecstatic kissing"

Also - shades of Team Apocalypse here: "Sir: Would you say that folks unduly excited over the present epidemic act like a lot of flunatics"

The excerpt below notes I think what many of us feel: "The people are perfectly willing to do whatever needs to be done. But they dislike greatly the inconvenience themselves only to learn later that what they did was not necessary."

Oh... the propaganda was in full force back then. Check out this San Francisco Chronicle from October of that same year.

And the Karens were there as well! I love this snippet of a budding fascist. We know now that the masks in 1918 did little to stop the spread (if anything) but they say we should try again! You can practically hear Mayor London Breed through these very words:

In San Francisco they actually enlisted the help of teachers to educate people on the epidemic. Would that all teachers today had as much sense and bravery as this one:

How about a post-mortem on masks? Fast-forward to 1920. St. Louis Globe-Democrat Feb 11. After praising the use of masks for medical personal the article notes: "At the end of the first wave there was a general agreement that the measure had proved ineffective."

The writer goes on to blame people in part for not wearing the mask consistently and says that if the RIGHT mask was worn PROPERLY it MIGHT have worked but "This is not enough to warrant the compulsory use of masks by all people." 100 years later - we haven't learned a thing.

Here's one from The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, Feb 14, 1920 (still in publication today! @delawareonline ) a poem, satirical in style, decrying the plethora of masks in 1920 "Masks, masks, who will buy..."

Of course, not all of the "science" back there was quite so impressive. A widely circulated report in the 1920's claimed influenza was passed from the "doffing" of hats.

Still... how is it in that 1918 I get more relevant / detailed information than I can in 2020?! HIPPA laws wouldn't allow you to publish the names but at least we've know a bit more about who and what and where instead of "5 outbreaks" in this zipcode.

In short, we could have saved ourselves so much outrage and pain had we retained a memory of what our ancestors went through a century ago.