- (electronic music)
- (Michael) What’s up Wisecrack? Michael here to talk about the most contentious issue
of 2020, one so divisive it could destroy the fabric of society or at the very least,
wreak havoc on your local Costco.
- (Costco Man) I feel threatened! - (Customer) Don’t come any closer!
- (Costco Man) Back up!
- (Michael) That’s right. We’re talking about masks, or that humble 6x9 inch piece
of fabric that manages to bring thousands of grown-ups to tears.
- (Woman) And they want to throw God’s… wonderful breathing system out the door.
- (Michael) This potentially life saving piece of cloth that obscures approximately 56.2%
of your face is causing drama all over the country, especially amongst my fellow Florida
Men. And by and large, viral videos of these maskless masses have yielded widespread derision
from the Twitterati.
But what if this is the wrong strategy? As people fundamentally obsessed with both not
catching the plague and slam-dunking on psuedoscience, we at Wisecrack are left wondering: Are shame
and ridicule the answer? How can we encourage our fellow Wawa patrons to hide their beautifully-shaped
mouths?
- (Interviewer) So you left Wawa? - (Man) I did.
- (Interviewer) Because of - - (Man) Voluntarily, because I refuse to wear
a mask.
- (Michael) Believe it or not - this is not a new problem. Public health interventions
have been inconveniencing and annoying Americans for years, whether we’re being told to smash
safely, stop exhaling second hand smoke, or wear a seatbelt so some volunteer firefighter
doesn’t have to scrape you off the side of the road. But what have public health officials
learned from decades of trying to make Americans behave? Let’s find out in this Wisecrack
Edition: America Hates Masks. Now What?
- (Michael) Masks have been worn to stem the spread of diseases to varying degrees of success
since the 17th century, when the resurgence of the bubonic plague had doctors looking
like the stuff of nightmares. Fortunately, modern doctors prefer the more scientifically-grounded
and less terrifying surgical or n95 masks. Now, for a quick primer on how masks work
in regards to Covid: Every time you open your gross piehole, you spew invisible, disgusting
droplets of your inner filth. When your aforementioned filth includes tiny Covid-19 particles, these
droplets can make your fellow humans sick.
Masks, worn correctly, block these droplets, preventing others from inhaling your disgusting
lung juice. And that’s probably why most Americans are wearing masks at least once
per week, which, ok is better than nothing. Among the complicated and contentious issues
our country faces - this one *seems* like it should be about as controversial as “please
wear pants in Denny’s.” So why the FURIOUS response to being told to cover your facehole?
To understand America’s maskphobia, let’s look back at the last time we were asked to
wear masks not on Halloween: the 1918-1919 influenza outbreak aka the Spanish Flu, unfairly
dubbed the “Spanish flu” because Spanish newspapers were the first to report on it.
It was a devastating pandemic, ultimately afflicting around 500 million people, then
one-third of the world’s population. It was super fatal, particularly for healthy
20-40 somethings. Afflicted countries relied on many of the same public health strategies
we grumpily follow today, like neurotic hand washing, and cancelling every fun house party.
Except you know, they didn’t have Netflix or zoom trivia to help their sanity.
And then there were the gauze masks. While they had become a common sight in American
hospitals, mask wearing by the masses was “among the most novel public health practices”
introduced during this pandemic, according to historian Nancy Tomes. As the flu spread,
public health authorities across the country encouraged people to make and wear these masks,
and some cities even passed laws requiring them. San Francisco issued such a mandate
in October 1918, with detractors being subject to a fine or up to ten days imprisonment.
Many other cities and states unsuccessfully attempted to do the same, but were stymied
by resistance from city council officials or boards of health, as explained by University
of Michigan researcher J. Alexander Navarro. And in places where laws WERE passed, they
sometimes caused quite a stir. Interestingly, Navarro notes that it was mask ordinances,
rather than the very strict lockdowns, that seem to have provoked the most anger from
the masses.
In response, local governments were met with INTENSE defiance. Sound familiar?
- (TJs Woman) That man harassed me for not wearing a mask!
- (Michael) One especially interesting parallel between the two pandemics, though, lies in
*who* was wearing masks, and who wasn’t. According to a US National Library of Medicine
report, men were the "weak links in hygienic discipline" in 1918. A newspaper article from
the time paints a picture: “The average man wore the mask slung to the back of his
neck until he came in sight of a policeman, and most people had holes cut into them to
stick their cigars and cigarettes through.” Recent polls have shown similar mask-wearing
reluctance amongst men today - making the Spanish-flu era response to maskless-dude-bros
particularly instructive for us. So how DID we deal with these mustachioed, cigar-chewing
rebel-babies?
In response to male maskphobia, public health officials adapted a “more modern, manly
form of public health, steeped in discipline, patriotism, and personal responsibility.”
We see this ethos in a 1919 ad, which features a masked guy urging the public to “stamp
out the Spanish influenza.” You know, the way manly men do. These patriotic efforts
piggybacked off a massively-successful World War I ad campaign, which invoked the civic
duty required of every American. An ad from The Red Cross even warned that “The man,
woman or child that will not wear a mask now is a dangerous slacker.” Similarly, American
vaccine campaigns over the years have also framed getting vaccinations as a “patriotic
duty” quite successfully, particularly when it came to eradicating polio. And make no
mistake: Efforts to convince Americans to don masks WERE largely effective. As historian
John M. Barry writes in his book The Great Influenza, masks were “seen everywhere and
would become a symbol of the epidemic.” A wide network of churches and charities developed
to produce masks, and millions of Americans made their own at home. A gauze-covered face
became a not-particularly-sexy symbol of your patriotism. And I know I know, getting someone
to help other people so that they “feel like a man” is a VERY weird ask, but hey
- if it works? Can we get the Old Spice guy in on this?
- (Old Spice Guy) Anything is possible when your man smells like old spice and not a lady.
I’m on a horse.
- (Michael) Now, it’s important to note that mask-wearing in 1919 wasn’t a magic
bullet. Experts have advanced different theories as to why masks didn’t effectively stop
the spread of influenza: like, people made shitty masks and then wore them incorrectly
or they didn’t wash them enough or they’d remove them while socializing-
- (Male employee) Through email and address! - (Female employee 1) Donate used shoes in
store! - (Female employee 2) What else? Roger it’s
your birthday! - (Roger) It is not my birthday!
- (Michael) Because THAT makes sense. Also, influenza travels in much smaller airborne
droplets than Covid-19, making it harder to block with a mask. But I digress, because
we’re talking about how to get people to wear masks to protect against something they
can ACTUALLY stop the spread of: the novel coronavirus.
Despite successful appeals to patriotism and manliness during the influenza pandemic, there
was still plenty of griping and complaining, particularly in places where masks became
legally mandated. Most infamously, there were the two-thousand or so detractors who formed
the San Francisco Anti-Mask League. But even those who obeyed were thoroughly annoyed - When
the mask order was lifted in San Fran after mere weeks, everyone collectively cheered
and tore their masks off, leaving “the sidewalks and runnels strewn... with the relics of a
tortuous month”. Clearly, Americans have a lot of FEELINGS about the combined indignities
of wearing a mask AND being told what to do. This led scholar Laura Spinney to suggest,
in her book about the 1918 pandemic, that “people have a low tolerance for mandatory
health measures” and what’s more, that “such measures are most effective when they
are voluntary, when they respect and depend on individual choice, and when they avoid
the use of police powers.” In other words, it’s sometimes better to inform citizens
with the facts about masks, vaccines, seatbelts, etc - so as to arm them with information so
that they do the right thing. There’s probably a lot of you watching this who don’t drink
and drive because it’s a “dick move” that could “kill somebody” rather than
out of a specific fear of getting arrested.
Recent evidence suggests that mandates *can* increase compliance for mask-wearing, seatbelts,
and vaccinations, even if public health experts typically prefer education over enforcement.
Indeed, Spinney notes that a 2007 CDC pandemic policy suggested relying on voluntary compliance
with public health measures unless mortality rates excede 1%. The point is there’s a
limit to how far “playing nice” will go for the CDC when confronting mass death.
It’s also important to note that, even if we CAN successfully get most people to wear
masks, it’s useless if they do so incorrectly. This was a huge problem during the Spanish
flu: TONS of people wore crappy masks, and they wore them wrong. Besides the aforementioned
“cigarette holes,” the very idea of which makes my head explode- people used inadequate
materials, like cheese cloths, or they exposed their noses, or they recycled dirty masks.
We’re obviously seeing a similar problem today, with mask fails plaguing everyone from
“nose breathers” to people wearing “valved masks” that filter air coming IN while expelling
diseased air OUT for everyone else to enjoy. Arguably, this could be combated with more
robust messaging about the correct kinds of masks to wear, and exactly how to wear them
- particularly given that Americans are accessible by more methods of communication than ever
before. Like … why wasn’t this Youtube video annoyingly prefaced with a federally-sponsored
public health commercial telling you to cover your mouth AND nose so we’re also protected
from the Covid molecules camping out in your boogers? And why isn’t the government making
fun Twitter videos about hand washing? All in all, the 1918 pandemic demonstrates that
education should be our first line of defense against pandemics.
The influenza pandemic offers a really simple one-to-one comparison for examining America’s
mask-phobia. However, it’s also worth examining another, more recent public health education
effort: the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and resulting campaign to increase condom use. Look at the
early years of this crisis, and you’ll see parallels to our current predicament. First
and foremost, there was an entirely new virus to educate people about.
- (Narrator) In a healthy individual there are twice as many T helper cells as T suppressor
cells. In people with AIDs this ratio is reversed.
- (Michael) Secondly, the federal government basically ignored it and hoped it would go
away - worsening the spread. Thirdly, people who took it seriously were often mocked:
- (Michael) Even by President Reagan’s own press secretary, who responded to one reporter’s
questions about AIDS by intimating that the reporter was himself infected with the virus.
While the American government was deadly silent about the virus for YEARS, there were worldwide
public health efforts attempting to promote “awareness” in the early 80s, mostly by
seriously freaking people out. Some ads went so far as to use imagery of tombstones and
grim reapers. As researchers from Population Action International found, such campaigns
hadn’t “provided information about HIV/AIDS nor suggested new behaviors effective in preventing
HIV acquisition or transmission, and essentially only increased fear.”
This approach would be echoed later in the decade by some American government-sponsored
ads. And it was probably… really... not smart. That’s not because fear categorically
doesn’t work -- One Michigan State meta-analysis of fear-based public health messaging shows
that ads that aggressively appeal to fear actually CAN be highly successful - so long
as they are accompanied by the message that people CAN take effective steps to protect
themselves. However, fear-based ads like our Grim Reaper that DON’T empower people to
protect themselves are counter productive - resulting in defensiveness or denial. Similar
studies have come to the same conclusions about anti-drug ads like the infamous -
- (Commercial) This is your brain on drugs!
- (Michael) Which offers the viewer no suggestions on how to take personal action.
Rather than spurring people to change their behavior, relying purely on fear seems to
make people shut down and maybe even giggle.
- (Gym Teacher) Don’t have sex. Because you will get pregnant. And die!
- (Michael) But AIDs education wasn’t all death incarnate. Early on in the epidemic,
queer activists stepped up to fill the void created by US governmental inaction and widespread
homophobia. These activists took public health education into their own hands. For example,
one 1983 pamphlet made by activists pioneered the concept of “safer sex” teaching specific
behaviors that could drastically reduce people’s risk of contracting AIDS, without stamping
out their sex lives entirely. Such messaging, according to public health scholar Tasleem
J. Padamsee, was “oriented toward changing individual behavior by transforming community
norms,” most specifically by turning condom use into a common practice for gay men. Such
community-based educational efforts were, according to Padamsee, remarkably effective
at stemming the spread of the disease. Accordingly, these independent efforts established some
“best practices” in public health that continue today -- specifically by encouraging
simple, clear directives targeted towards those who most need to receive the message.
(In contrast, America’s government-sponsored AIDS campaigns in the mid to late 80s focused
on the message that “anyone can get AIDS,” without specifying the critical fact that
certain groups faced a disproportionate risk.)
Here, we see the way public health messaging made *by* members of a community, *for* their
community, can be remarkably effective - and can even kick-start wider public health efforts,
which is probably partially why you MAYBE received somewhat-comprehensive sex ed in
school.
In other words: teaching people how stuff works is a really good idea. Some might say
it’s the basic foundation on which this channel was founded. And of course, it’s
messy, and tricky, and tiring. There are some people who will not be convinced by any amount
of evidence that this Facebook post is not scientific fact. And there are times when
you have to take extreme action - like barring someone the joy of picking up Kung Pao Cauliflower
in order to make them behave responsibly, at least temporarily. But regardless, we should
probably at least try to educate our friends and loved ones to please, for the love of
god, cover your disease holes. But … in a nice way?
But what do you guys think? Would nation-wide messages about masks that stress our patriotic
and moral duties be more effective than all the Twitter shaming in the world? Or is getting
this guy [I feel threatened] to wear a mask simply impossible? Let us know what you think
in the comments. Huge thanks to our dope patrons for supporting the channel and our podcasts.
Hit that subscribe button and ,as always, thanks for watching. Peace.