History Lesson: SF Had an Anti-Mask League During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

It turns out that, a century ago, San Francisco was home to a movement akin to the "liberate" protests that have been going on around the country, in which city residents formed an Anti-Mask League as the 1918 influenza pandemic extended into January 1919.

Yes, San Francisco may be a progressive place where we embrace science and listen to health experts these days, but a century ago, public fatigue with health orders relating to the influenza pandemic in its second wave incited protest — specifically a local order that, just like we instituted here again a little over a week ago, required surgical-type cloth masks in public to help stop the spread of the virulent strain of the flu.

NPR reporter Tim Mak unearthed this tidbit from San Francisco's past and wrote about it in a Twitter thread last week. It comes via newspaper clippings from January 1919, and historical reporting by local author Gary Kamiya, and Alfred W. Crosby in his book America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. Mak also drew on the SF Chronicle's archives and the University of Michigan's Influenza Encyclopedia.

The story goes like this: The Dr. Fauci of San Francisco in 1918 was a man named Dr. William C. Hassler. As the second wave of the influenza pandemic began in the fall of 1918, San Francisco was only seeing its first confirmed cases. The first case came on September 24, when a man newly arrived in town from Chicago fell ill. Just weeks later, on October 9, SF had 169 cases. That number ballooned over the course of several weeks. By October 17, Mayor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph was ordering all schools, dance halls, and movie theaters shut down — sound familiar?

Hassler and the Board of Supervisors instituted a mask-wearing ordinance for the city by late October, to which there were citations and fines attached. The public mostly complied into November, at which point cases in SF were down, and public health officials recommended reopening the city on November 21. But cases surged again within weeks, and Hassler tried to re-institute the masking ordinance again, encouraging people to wear masks in early December. City officials voted down his mask ordinance on December 19, and flu cases and deaths surged again — with the peak death count here being December 30.




https://sfist.com/2020/04/27/history-lesson-sf-had-an-anti-mask-league-during-the-1918-flu-pandemic-who-rallied-against-face-masks/