![]() ![]() While technologies such as premodern respirators, gas masks, cloth face masks, and modern medical respirators maintain important technical differences and provide different types of protection, their symbolic associations and messaging has, at times, appeared quite similar.Ī retrospective look at the development of these technologies and their fluctuating symbolism reveals the difficulties facing any state that wants to protect all of its citizens without producing fear or panic. This history, and the history of the artificial respirators that preceded the gas mask, thus resonates with contemporary deliberations over protective equipment. Spanish flu–era public health advisory from the October 18, 1918, edition of Illustrated Current News. Those who ultimately rejected the gas mask often made familiar claims about its symbolic role in anticipating and even expediting a dangerous future, stating that such a seemingly foreign and foreboding object militarized the public and made war unavoidable in the collective imagination. Like the surgical mask during both the Spanish flu and COVID-19 pandemics, the gas mask was seen as a protective device laden with meaning. But there was another attempt to mask populations in the early 20th century that was far more widespread and long-lasting: the provision of gas masks in the 1930s. ![]() However, these masks were rarely standardized, and they were required only for relatively brief periods of time in certain parts of the United States. In search of precedent, many Americans encountered images of the gauze masks worn during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–1920. These dissenters often presented themselves as the defenders of civil liberties, rejecting the heavy hand of the state to continue their vision of “the American way of life” and insisting that supposed scare tactics would have unanticipated and undesired effects on everything from long-term mental health to daily social cohesion.ĭissenters rarely acknowledged, however, that the COVID-19 pandemic was not the first historical instance in which modern states tried to mask their populaces. Library of Congressįor many of its detractors, the face mask was a symbol of new societal fears, overstated dangers of COVID-19, and an attempt to coercively bind the American people in the midst of an imagined crisis. Submission to the Library of Congress’s crowd-sourced project “COVID-19: American Experiences,” photograph by Desmond Johnson, October 2020. Beyond its practical value, the mask became a complicated symbol, one that could encompass broad concern for public health, a commitment to standing American political structures, and a reconciliation with a newly dangerous atmosphere. Nevertheless, social, cultural, and political divisions have led to various claims that the state’s recommendations were overly cautious and possibly authoritarian, with the face mask (in its various forms) serving as the central object of disagreement. In the United States, CDC guidelines on social distancing and masking have been carefully constructed to encourage public confidence and adherence. Others argue that fear-based messaging can create a sense of widespread fatalism or even societal panic.Įither way, the COVID-19 pandemic provides a distinct historical moment in which concerns over the way scientific issues are publicly conveyed and addressed by the state have become paramount. Some experts claim that fear proves highly motivational and that there is no way to avoid prognostication of a dangerous future. Opinions vary over the impact this kind of messaging has on the success of policies. And as future global climate and health crises loom, academic debates often center on the value of scare tactics-text and images that warn of an impending apocalypse. But then something shifted-safety regulations became politicized.įor scholars and policymakers, the politicization of the disease and its management has underscored many of the difficulties inherent to public health messaging. Schools and businesses shut down, face masks were ubiquitous, and, for a brief moment, it seemed as if public health messaging had prevailed. In the United States people hunkered down indoors, avoiding gatherings. Is fear a socially unifying emotion? During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic it certainly seemed that way.
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