Seattle, WA policemen wearing face masks during the
influenza epidemic.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was a quick burning,
destructive, and chaotic flu that wiped out a large swath
of the world’s population. People were told to wear masks
but in many instances some just straight up refused. It was
all due to the lack of accurate folks research into the illness.
Historian John Barry explained that during the flu of 1918
there was an extreme amount of disinformation going
around: The press did not treat the 1918 flu seriously
during the outbreak, for reasons that are very different
than today.
There was real fake news coming out of the U.S. government
about the 1918 flu. As a general rule, the media was extremely
complicit with the U.S. government in telling those lies.
There was no partisan division over the 1918 flu. It was to no
one’s political benefit to try to expose the truth about the
pandemic then.
Warehouses were converted to house the infected people quarantined.